David Pryor Adickes was an American sculptor and painter born in Huntsville, Texas. He is best known for A Tribute to Courage, the sixty-seven-foot statue of Sam Houston, the first and third president of the Republic of Texas, erected in Adickes’s hometown on the northbound side of I-45 in 1994. That same year, a drive to Mount Rushmore inspired Adickes to embark on his most ambitious undertaking: a series of two-ton, eighteen-to-twenty-foot concrete-and-steel busts of every U.S. president. He ended the series in the early twenty-first century with President Barack Obama. Adickes passed away at the age of ninety-eight in the summer of 2025, and the Houston studio housing one full set of the busts, beneath the I-69 overpass at I-10, is scheduled to close in mid-2026. Other versions can be found elsewhere; American Statesmanship Park, also known as “Mount Rush Hour,” stands at the intersection of I-10 and I-45 and features busts of Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. Through the Adickes estate, his vision endures: to place the full set of forty-three presidential busts, from Washington through Obama, in a regional park system, tourism destination, or other public setting. Private acquisition will also be considered.
