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Thanks to Ernie Poe, the mayor of nearby Sharon Springs, the Fort Wallace Museum now has a life-sized sculpture of a buffalo, made entirely out of barbwire. Although it doesn't have a name, it does have a lot of class.
It all started with a picture in a magazine that caught Ernie's eye. This picture featured a roadrunner that had been crafted out of barb wire. Since seeing that photo, Ernie had created a barbed wire roadrunner of his own, not to mention two cacti, numerous birds, a few pheasants, several lizards, a cactus or two, an oxen team, three horses, and a farrier to match.
His newest creation, the as of yet unnamed buffalo, took two miles of wire to create and sits on a limestone pedestal three feet tall. Most of the wire is coiled to make the buffalo look more authentic and a set of real buffalo horns completes the sculpture. A barbwire fence with four limestone posts surrounds the entire sculpture,keeping children and adults alike from getting their fingers pricked. Ernie has also helped to make two new signs advertising the Fort Wallace Museum. each a mile from the museum on either the east or the west side. Atop each sign in a metal cut-out of a buffalo.
Although he has made what seems to be his crowning achievement, Ernie is not going to stop making sculptures out of spare bits of wire now, and as long as we still have space here at the museum, we're not about to make him.
(July 2005)
Fort Wallace Memorial Association
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