During the urban unrest in the summer of 2020, protesters in downtown Portland pulled down or damaged statues in a number of the city’s public parks. Among them was a bronze sculpture titled “The Promised Land,” which depicts a pioneer family the kind of which traversed the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800s. The sculpture, which had graced Chapman Square near Portland City Hall since 1993, was splashed with red paint and defaced with graffiti.

Shortly afterward, the city of Portland removed the sculpture from the park and placed it, along with other works of public art targeted by the protesters, into storage, where they remain today. A years-long “public conversation” about what comes next for the statues has failed to settle their fate.

One option, championed by some Portlanders, is to return the statues to their original locations or to other public spaces in Portland. This, however, has not come to pass and, as time goes by, appears less and less likely to happen.

Given this, the Grant County Change Club has petitioned the city of John Day to contact the city of Portland, offer to take ownership of “The Promised Land” sculpture, and offer to pay the cost of its transportation to Grant County. Once it were here, we propose the sculpture (which measures 10.5 feet by 5.5 feet by 5.5 feet) be installed on the grounds of the Pit Stop, where we believe it would be a beautiful addition to downtown John Day and a real upgrade to a plot of land that, at least so far, is a flat and featureless expanse of paver stone.

The sculpture would dovetail perfectly with John Day’s Western frontier heritage and, we believe, become a source of immense civic pride for our city, revered by its residents as a noble and true representation of the history of the American West and the hardy pioneers who helped build it.

It’s possible the city of Portland would let John Day assume ownership of the sculpture gratis. If Portland wanted remuneration, however, funding from private sources could likely be obtained to buy and transport it.

If the city council would like to pursue this, members of the Change Club will be happy to help draft a written proposal to the city of Portland.