Backyard oddity near Williamsburg with more than 40 giant, decaying presidential heads getting ready for new life

A local oddity outside Williamsburg is getting ready for its new chapter.

For the past decade, following the demise of a short-lived tourism attraction, more than 40 huge presidential heads have resided on James City County businessman Howard Hankins’ family property in Croaker.

Now, the crumbling busts are getting ready for a public reopening, and the owner has big plans for the future that include a winery, brewery, amphitheater and an equestrian center.

Driving onto the 600-acre property, it’s difficult to imagine where the heads might be hiding. At the end of a long, dusty drive, there is a single brick home. Behind the house, the 20-foot-tall heads are tucked beside a hill and sit in random formation, staring dispassionately out at the construction that takes place around them.

The busts have sat in an open field in various states of disrepair, receiving visitors both approved and unapproved, who pop by to take photos with well-known faces like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

There are 42 busts in total, spanning from Washington to George W. Bush. Before the heads came into Hankins’ possession, they were part of Presidents Park in York County, near Water Country USA. Artist David Adickes sculpted the heads for the park, which was open from 2004-2010. A smaller-scale model for the 44th president, Barack Obama, was done in preparation for the larger version to add to the set, but the park closed before it could be completed.

The heads were slated for destruction in 2012, but Hankins, who had been contracted to get rid of them, decided to save them instead.

“It’s for the people who appreciate our country,” he said. “It’s trying to preserve something to tell people what these guys did to make this country what it is.”

Over the course of several days, Hankins had the sculptures moved to his own property in James City County, where they’ve sat in wait until now. The smaller Obama head is there, too, elsewhere on the property.

According to Hankins, it has become something of a ritual for William & Mary students to try and sneak in for a visit with the heads before graduation.

“We catch some of them,” he said. But others haven’t been deterred from trying, picking their way through the surrounding woodlands, across the plains of construction and around the mounds of dirt to find the sculptures.

The attraction’s longtime, cult-like popularity is a testament to its uniqueness. And now, Hankins and his team are ready to launch The Ruines at Hankins Folly, an ambitious new project that seeks to revamp the heads as part of a multifaceted tourist attraction.

The site is constantly abuzz with activity these days, as trucks go back and forth, navigating a winding path through the mountains of dirt and mulch that dot the property as crews prep the land for the project.

The mastermind behind The Ruines is Alyse Hancock, a brand architect and consultant based out of Los Angeles.

Hancock met Hankins at an event while she was in the area for a personal visit. When he told her about the oddity in his backyard, she was quick to get involved.

“He said, ‘I’ve got these heads,’” she said with a laugh. “My business associates and clients, they always say, ‘You get the weirdest projects,’ and now there’s a garden with 42 giant heads. You can’t make this up, right?”

Since coming on board last July, Hancock has served as something of a director on the project, though she said that her title isn’t official.

When Hancock first came on board, Hankins’ goal was still to try and restore the busts, which have suffered some damage over the years. But Hancock had another idea.

“These are a sculpture collection,” she said. “(He) had the vision to protect them but he didn’t know what to do with them. So they were going to make another presidential park and I said, ‘That’s not the value in it. The value is the quirkiness that we have right now.’”

Hancock’s vision is to stabilize and restore the heads using a Japanese art form called Kintsugi, which is the art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum, treating the breakage and repair as a part of the history of an object as opposed to disguising it.

“(The) dings tell a story,” the Hankins Folly website says. “They are now an art collective and will be frozen in time as skilled engineers stabilize them and teams of artisans (fill) their holes with unique materials, giving them a new yet quirky life.”

Eventually, the busts will be the central feature in a garden attraction on the property, surrounded by a wall that will help protect them from after-hours visitors.

“I want to emphasize the sculpture,” Hancock said. “We know they’re presidents but let’s look at it as the art, and we’re going to use that as a centerpiece of other events.”

In addition to the sculpture garden, the plan is for The Ruines at Hankins Folly to feature a 3,000-seat amphitheater, a winery, distillery and brewery, event space for weddings and other gatherings and an equestrian center.

“We wanted something to complement the community and Williamsburg as a whole,” Hancock said. “They’ve got Busch Gardens, they’ve got history, so something that people can come as a family and feel safe and refreshed,” Hancock said.

To achieve their ultimate vision, those at The Ruines are looking at a lengthy road ahead.

According to Paul Holt, James City County’s director of community development and planning, such a proposal would require a rezoning and a special use permit, both of which are legislative approvals that will require public hearings with both the planning commission and the board of supervisors. The process can take months.

Once granted, the next step would be to create development plans for review and approval before construction can begin, Holt said.

Right now, the hope is to file the necessary paperwork with the county within the next couple of weeks, Hancock said.

The plan is to take it in phases, with phase one encompassing stabilizing and moving the heads to their final location on the property, and building the garden, amphitheater, cabins, equestrian stables and trails. For this phase, if all goes to according to plan, Hancock said they’re looking at around 3-5 years before completion.

While the community will have to wait to see the fully-realized project, there are still a limited number of openings available for the old version of the tour, which will end April 30. New tours will begin Memorial Day weekend in May, and Hancock hopes to have all of the sculptures stabilized by August.

For Hankins, the most exciting part of the expansive project is achieving what he’s wanted since saving the heads all those years ago: keeping this unique piece of history alive for everyone to see.

“What excites me most is preserving them,” he said.

Sian Wilkerson, 757-342-6616, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com