Big Sam

Huntsville, Texas, is best known to many people as being the home of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which makes it the capital punishment capital of the United States. It also happens to be the home of Sam Houston State University because Huntsville is where Sam Houston lived for many years. As such, it was also chosen to be the site of a commemorative statue to the Texas hero which was unveiled in 1994.

“A Tribute to Courage” is commonly called “Big Sam” and is a 67 foot statue of Sam Houston which stands on a 10 foot base of Texas Granite. The statue was designed by David Adickes and is the largest statue of an American hero in the world. It is not quite as big as the Statue of Liberty, but the Statue of Liberty does not depict a real person. It seems fitting that the Sam Houston of all people would have the honor of having the tallest statue to a real person. As the old cliché goes, “Everything is bigger in Texas.”

Adickes was not only the artist of the statue, but it was his idea to build it. To do that, he raised all of the funds necessary for the construction himself. The Huntsville-Walker County Chamber of Commerce just raised money for the base of the statue and a visitor’s center. To do this, it sold paving stones in a campaign it called “Stand with Sam.” Thousands of Huntsville’s citizens ended up contributing to the project.

Building the statue was quite an undertaking and something Adickes had never attempted before. He first built a life-size version of the statue. He then oversaw the transformation of the life-sze version into the finished memorial using 30 tons of concrete and steel. In all five individual layers of concrete were stacked on top of each other and attached to a steel framework.

Construction began in 1992 with a target completion day of March 2, 1993 which was Sam Houston’s 200th birthday. The construction took longer than expected, however, and the dedication ceremony had to be delayed until October 22, 1994. When it was held, however, the ceremony featured some very impressive guests. Not only were the artist, local media, local businesses, and local citizens in attendance, but Governor Ann Richards, Dan Rather, both Texas senators, and numerous other important guests showed up to dedicate the statue. Since then, the museum’s guest book had recorded over 500,000 signatures from 91 countries around the world.