A horse of a different color

Ever notice how various towns "adopt" an animal to represent it?  Traveling from town to town, we've seen a whole variety of these adopted animals, painted in all sorts of different motifs.  I'm not sure who was the first to come up with the idea of "painting an animal for  special purposes", but it's sure popular!  Typically, a company, organization or even the local military base will sponsor these, paying the artist or contributing to a fund-raiser.

It's been fun to see the various animals that the towns come up with.  Horses seem to be the most common, with bison falling closely behind.   Some of the towns just have the animals in basic color (copper, or just painted black & white).  Some of the towns, tho, really go all out - or perhaps some towns just have better artists involved.   A few towns adopt a "symbol" of something to represent them, like the caskets of New Orleans.

When a town goes "all out", I love seeking out the statues, and taking pictures of course.  We are currently in Ogden Utah, and I can say that this town had the most participation than any I've seen thus far.  They chose the "horse" as their symbol and have 80 of them in their downtown area.  They are up and down all the streets, some with their heads down, some (most) standing, looking forward and few reared up on their back legs.  All beautifully done, all very different from each other.  Quite a show.  Theirs were done to celebrate the town's 75th anniversary of Ogden's Pioneer Days. 

Here are some pictures of Ogden's horses, along with a sample of some of the other "special art" we've found...

  Ogden Pioneer Days 75th Celebration Horses

 Antelope Island, Utah

 Custer, South Dakota

 Jacksonville Florida

 Lexington, Kentucky

 Pensacola, Florida

Georgetown, Kentucky

 Vero Beach, Florida

 Salt Lake, Utah

 Colorado

 Bennington, New Hampshire

                                                                                    New Orleans, Louisiana

 Winchester, Virginia

 Berea, Kentucky

 Hollywood, California

 Memphis, Tennessee

 New Orleans, Louisiana

I'm sure there are a lot more out there...I'll just keep on looking!

...on the road in Utah,  Marie