The return of "Big Red": Tractor installed along Gurley Avenue in Gillette

GILLETTE —It was a windy Thursday afternoon as a forklift carried a 1925 Fordson Model F tractor north on Gurley Avenue. City employees helped with traffic control as the forklift maneuvered over the curb and unloaded the 3,000-pound tractor gently onto a concrete pad, across the street from the Sinclair gas station and just past the Gurley Overpass.
“That’s going to fit on there just perfect,” Nello Williams said as he took pictures with his phone. “It’s not Big Red the horse, it’s Big Red the tractor.”
“It’s art for our end of town,” he said.
The tractor was the result of efforts from Williams, Greg Dougherty and Roger Gustafson to get some art on Gurley Avenue, north of the overpass. And like the horse sculpture that it’s replacing, it pays tribute to Campbell County’s agricultural roots.
In 2019, “Clippity Clop,” a metal sculpture by artist Dixie Jewett, debuted in Gillette as part of the city’s Avenues of Art. At 11 feet tall, 10 feet wide and 5,000 pounds, it was so big that the city had to install a new concrete pad for it.
Williams affectionately called it Big Red, which was the nickname of the famous racehorse Secretariat.
It was removed, much to the disappointment of Williams, who pointed out that there are far fewer sculptures on the north side of the town compared to the south side.
“We want to look pretty too,” Williams said.
The horse sculpture is now at Mount Pisgah Cemetery. When it was removed from the pad on Gurley Avenue, it left a horse-sized hole in the hearts of Williams and the north side of Gillette.
“That poor horse, that horse, he counted the cars whenever they went by, he watched Legion baseball, he watched the Kwik Shop, made sure everybody was safe,” Williams said last year. “But we don’t have the horse now.”
Now Big Red is watching over those who’ve been laid to rest at the cemetery, Williams said, but he wasn’t going to leave north Gillette without a piece of art.
Gustafson had a replica of a longhorn steer in front of his shop, which is right by where “Clippity Clop” stood. Williams thought this would be a perfect replacement, but Gustafson didn’t want to part with it.
A crate with a pair of mannequin legs was put on that pad. That was there for two days before it was removed, Williams said. And Dougherty brought a fire tube that was on the concrete pad for one day.
“We’ve had a little fun with the city,” Williams said.
Over the course of several months, Williams worked to get a replacement for Big Red.
Dougherty, owner of Greg’s Welding, and Gustafson, a local collector, are joint owners of the Fordson tractor. Gustafson found it north of town, where it had been unused for 30 years.
The tractor predates the Gurley Overpass by more than half a century, and was built five years before the Great Depression. It ran on a 20-horsepower four-cylinder engine, and was made by none other than Henry Ford.
“Henry Ford actually made that, but called it a Fordson because the name Ford was already used,” Gustafson said.
The name of Ford Tractor was already being used by a company in Minneapolis, and the shareholders of the Ford Motor Company didn’t want to get into tractor production, so Henry Ford started a new company just for tractors.
Even though it had the power of 20 horses, it had a top speed of pretty slow, Williams said.
“It’s a walk around tractor, which means you can walk faster than it goes,” he said.
“And if we’re going to put it to work, he’s going to drive it,” Dougherty said, gesturing to Gustafson.
Williams said the Mayor’s Art Council wasn’t on board with the tractor right away, but they were eventually convinced.
“They said, ‘Well, that’s not what we really do, as far as art goes,’” Williams said. “I told them, ‘You can have the north end of the town art, and you can have the south end of town art.’ That got a lot of laughs.”
Gustafson noted the parallels between this sculpture situation and the progression of industrialization and agriculture, replacing a horse with a tractor.
“We can say we’re getting newer,” he said. “We used to plow with a horse, and they quit the horse and went to the tractor. Maybe we’re just modernizing.
“We’re still a hundred years behind,” he said.
“Eventually we’ll catch up,” Williams said.
Dougherty noted that the moniker, Big Red, might not be the most accurate, since it’s been decades since the tractor has been red.
“We’ll call him Rusty Red,” Williams said.
The three men started brainstorming on other pieces of art, or old farm equipment, they could use to brighten up north Gillette.
“What are we going to do up here next, guys?” Williams asked. “We’ve got to do something else. Maybe we can find an old combine, or an old plow. I’ve got an old plow at home”
“I’ve got some old stuff at the ranch,” Dougherty said.
“We could put one on every pad,” Williams said.
 
This story was published on Nov. 1, 2022.