State and local officials will dedicate a new sculpture commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase survey at 10 a.m. Monday in front of the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.
The $190,000 sculpture, titled “Straight Lines on a Round World,” was created by local sculptor Michael Warrick and Louisiana artist Aaron Hussey. The two were commissioned by the Committee for Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Monument.
Monday’s dedication ceremony will feature a christening with water taken from the Arkansas and St. Francis rivers, according to a news release by the state Department of Parks and Tourism.
The sculpture features a large glass and metal compass with the Louisiana Purchase etched inside the continental U.S., with surveyors’ tools balanced against it.
The survey began in October 1815, when government surveyors set out heading north and west from the Mississippi River, walking between the Arkansas and St. Francis rivers. The point at which their paths crossed, at the juncture of what are now Monroe, Lee and Phillips counties in east Arkansas, became the starting place for the survey of the entire Louisiana Territory. That spot is now marked with a National Historic Monument.
Committee heads John Gill and Sharon Priest began planning the bicentennial monument after experiencing first-hand the survey’s east-west baseline from the mouth of the St. Francis River to the historical marker in Brinkley.
The two artists, Hussey and Warrick, had also worked together on the Little Rock Central High School Commemorative Garden, dedicated in 2001 to honor the Little Rock Nine.
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