Our Lady of the Rockies
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Our Lady of the Rockies is a 90-foot (27 m) statue of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, that sits atop the Continental Divide overlooking Butte, Montana. It is the United States's largest Madonna.
The statue was built by volunteers using donated materials to honor women everywhere, especially mothers. The base is 8,510 feet above sea level and 3,500 feet above the town. The statue is lit and visible at night.
[edit] Construction
The statue was first imagined by local resident Bob O'Bill. In 1979, his wife was seriously ill with cancer. He promised the Virgin Mary that he would make a 9 foot statue of her in his yard if his wife recovered. When she recovered he began the project with his fellow workers who gradually changed the initial vision to a mountain top statue nearly the size of the Statue of Liberty (151 feet).
Work on the project began December 29, 1979. Volunteers spent many summer evenings blasting a road to the top of the Rockies, sometimes making only 10 feet of progress a day. The base of the statue was poured in September of 1985 with 400 tons of concrete. On December 17, 1985, a CH-54 Sky Crane from the Army National Guard's 137th Aviation Company lifted the statue in four sections into place.
Supported by the Montana National Guard, the U.S. Army Reserve from Butte, and teams of civilian workers, the final head section was placed atop the statue at 4:07 PM Mountain Standard Time on December 20, 1985. Thousands of townspeople watched, honked their car horns, and rang church bells throughout the valley below.
[edit] Tourism
Two-hour roundtrip bus tours are available from June until September from the Our Lady of the Rockies shop at the Butte Plaza Mall. A tram consisting of handicapped accessible two 25-passenger cars is in the planning stages. As proposed, it would carry visitors over a mile-long vertical rise of 2,000 feet to the base of the statue in about 5 minutes.
[edit] References
