Solon H. Borglum "Sculptor of the Prairie"

Borglum's career after the ranch ran through Paris. He showed Lassoing Wild Horses at the Paris Salon in 1898 and The Stampede of Wild Horses in 1899, then spent that summer on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. He took a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis fair and in 1907 completed the equestrian monument to Rough Rider Buckey O'Neill in Prescott, Arizona. Serving in France as a YMCA secretary in World War I, he received the Croix de Guerre. He ran his American School of Sculpture in New York until his death in 1922.

What the plaque says

Solon H. Borglum "Sculptor of the Prairie" Solon H. Borglum (1868-1922), son of Danish Mormon emigrants, was a world-famous sculptor. From 1885 until 1893, Solon ran his father's cattle ranch located in the South Loup Valley just east of this marker. The Borglums moved from Utah to Omaha and Fremont when Solon was a child. In 1883 his father, James H. Borglum, bought land west of Cairo, Nebraska, but moved the family to California, where Solon worked as a cowboy. After the family returned to Omaha in 1885, Solon briefly studied painting before taking charge of the ranch. He was only seventeen. While at the ranch Solon began to make sketches, including scenes of blizzards in 1891. Solon's older brother John Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mount Rushmore, visited the ranch in 1890 and urged Solon to take up art full time. Solon left Nebraska in 1893 to study art in California, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Paris, France, and gave up painting for sculpture. Many of the works that earned him the title of "Sculptor of the Prairie" depicted cowboys, horses, and Indians and were inspired by his Nebraska ranching experiences. Cairo Roots Museum Nebraska State Historical Society, 2016 Hall County Historical Society Nebraska Junk Jaunt Centura School Students

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 20 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.
• Rowe Sanctuary — 25 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.

More markers nearby

• B-17 Crash, 1943 — 9.3 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps, Ravenna, Nebraska — 9.4 mi
• Post South Loup Fork "Fort Banishment" — 9.4 mi
• Dannebrog, Nebraska's Danish Capital — 12 mi