If things went according to schedule, Juneau, Alaska finally received their long-awaited whale sculpture this morning. And by long-awaited, I literally mean a long, long time – 10 years to be exact.
The life-sized whale sculpture arrived from Bellingham, Washington, and won’t be on display for a few more weeks. Once finished, the 28 foot tall, six-ton bronze breaching humpback will seemingly jump out of an infinity pool that the city still needs to build.
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is used to transporting strange things, and this is just the latest. “We’ve carried carnival equipment. We’ve carried planes with the wings off. I’ve even heard that we carried an elephant to Kodiak from Homer,” Jeremy Woodrow, spokesman for the department said. “Now we’ll be able to say that we carried a life-sized whale statue, too.”
The gigantic whale was made in Oregon, and welders from the foundry where it was created are scheduled to travel to Juneau on August 17 to attach the fins; current the whale is in three pieces.
The project has been in the works since 2007, and city officials say they hope to have the entire thing, infinity pool and all, done by next year. There will be a sea walk from the cruise pier leading to the sculpture when the project is complete.
Information courtesy of The Republic and Juneau Empire.
Featured photo: Sarah Kim on Flickr.
