Welded Wonders
Packway Sculptures Turns Scrap into Roadside Art…
Amongst dense pine forests, babbling creeks and the famous Burney Falls, there’s a unique little-known roadside attraction in the rural area of Cassel that’s worth a stop if you’re traveling anywhere near the Four Corners (where Highway 89 and Highway 299 meet).
Packway Materials, Inc. is a family-owned ready-mix sand and gravel company that’s been around since 1963. A few decades ago, brothers Richard and Will Hathaway decided to take some of the old equipment and other materials to build a 40-foot-long, five-ton dinosaur sculpture. In the years since, they have added to the collection, which has drawn the attention of those passing through.
“My grandfather (Richard) and Great Uncle Will built the sculpture garden,” says Packway Materials’ Kendra Hathaway, adding that her brother Arden and father Richie also contribute to it.
“My grandfather’s brother lives in the Oregon area, and he comes down a couple of times a year. They got to talking about how to use their old concrete stuff and decided to make sculptures out of it. They’ll come up with a thought or a plan and scavenge for a day, wandering around the junkyard area, then spend a weekend building whatever they come up with,” Kendra says.
The Packway sculpture garden is on about a fourth of an acre viewable from the main road, and the company’s operations sits back on property behind it. All the sculptures are made from scrap metal pieces; for instance, the dinosaur is made from a 10-gallon drum, and an oversized fish is made from a World War II airplane tank.
They’ve made sculptures using an oil separator, dish antennas, propane tanks, and “they turned a Volkswagen car body into a chicken hawk,” Kendra adds, but most of them are made from scrap metal. There’s a rock man (made of rocks, of course), a dragonfly, a snowman, a dachshund and a penguin. A skier, a cat and a UFO also sit out there.
“We have a sign-in book (nestled inside the tin man) and there’s usually multiple people out there wandering around,” Kendra says. The summer is much busier as people head up or down Highway 89 or Highway 299 on their Northern California road trip.
“The most popular sculpture is probably the ant, but we get a lot of comments on the flying pig,” she says. “The dinosaur is the same as our logo, so people recognize it.”
Packway’s newest sculpture is the tin man, and they have one in progress – a hot air balloon that’s about to get painted. The tallest sculpture is a giraffe, standing at 27 feet, 6 inches high. Packway has 21 sculptures total, and they get repainted and touched up when they need it (the dinosaur recently got a refresh).
People have tried to buy the sculptures or commission a sculpture from Packway, but they’re not for sale (although they did build a fish for the town of Burney). “It’s just a hobby for my family,” Kendra says, adding that her grandfather is now 86 years old and still highly active. “As long as he keeps wanting to do it and has ideas, then we’ll keep building them,” she adds. •
Packway Sculpture Garden
22244 Cassel Road, Cassel
(visible from the road)
