Pioneer Woman Museum

Story

The Pioneer Woman monument is a bronze sculpture in Ponca City, Oklahoma, designed by Bryant Baker and dedicated on April 22, 1930. The statue is of a sunbonneted woman leading a child by the hand. It was donated to the State of Oklahoma by millionaire oilman E. W. Marland. He commissioned models from twelve well-known sculptors and financed a nationwide tour to get feedback from art critics and the general public in order to decide which model to use for the final statue.Design and constructionAround 1925 Marland sketched out an ambitious sculptural program to sculptor Jo Davidson involving numerous statues based on the theme of the settling of the American West and attempted to persuade Davidson to take it on. When Davidson declined Marland replies that he could pay for it, prompting Davidson to come back with "I don't doubt it for a minute, but I don't see myself working for you for the rest of my life." Marland ultimately convinced Davidson to go to Ponca City, Marland's then home town, and create three statues for him: one of Marland and one of each of Marland's adopted children, Lydie and George.While Davidson was producing his three Marland statues E.W. told him of another project that he has in mind, "E.W.'s most cherished dream." Davidson writes, " It was to be a twenty-five foot figure, which he planned to put up on a hill where it could be seen for miles... E.W. brought his friends to see what I was doing. He acted as if he was the sculptor, and in conversation would say that he was doing the figure - that I was his hands."