Eagle of Mills (48 ft wingspan steel eagle, Eagle Park)

Mills, Wyoming, United States

·

Public art

✓

Current

Listed, not yet checked

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A steel eagle with a 48-foot wingspan and a weight of 8,100 pounds, mounted at Eagle Park in Mills, Wyoming. It is the work of Montana welder Todd Berget of Libby, who built 95 steel eagles. The town of Mills installed it in October 2018 as its first monument of this type, after a local businessman found it for sale near Kalispell, Montana, and secured it for $75,000; local businesses and residents were asked to contribute. After wind damage, it was repaired and reinstalled about 10 feet lower, at roughly 28 to 30 feet high.

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

No recommended arrival yet

We have not checked a recommended place to arrive or stop here yet.

This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Eagle of Mills (48 ft wingspan steel eagle, Eagle Park)

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Approximate location · 42.842° N, 106.368° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A steel eagle with a 48-foot wingspan stands in Eagle Park at the edge of Mills, Wyoming, and a local businessman found it for sale in Montana.

The Town of Mills says the eagle weighs 8,100 pounds and was installed in October 2018 at the corner of 2nd Street and Wyoming Boulevard. According to the town, a local businessman found it for sale outside Kalispell, Montana, in spring 2018 and brought the idea to the council, which made it the first monument of its type in the town. He secured it for $75,000 and sought donations from local businesses and residents. Cowboy State Daily adds that the council voted unanimously to go ahead and that the seller's price was, in the businessman's recollection, somewhere around $150,000 before it was negotiated down to $75,000.

The eagle is the work of Todd Berget, a Montana artist and welder from Libby. Cowboy State Daily reports that he began building steel eagles in 1997 and made 95 of them, that Libby came to be called the "City of Eagles", and that the Mills bird was the largest.

Mills itself, the newspaper says, sprang up in 1919 beside the North Platte River after a company bought land to mine sand and gravel for roads and tank revetments connected to the Midwest Refining Co.

After a December 2021 windstorm that brought gusts of 76 mph to the Casper area, Cowboy State Daily reports, large steel feathers broke loose. The sculpture was taken down, rewelded and reinforced, and reinstalled about 10 feet lower, at around 28 to 30 feet high. The newspaper says the road bends so that the eagle is visible to drivers approaching from either direction, and a Mills official told it the eagle now appears on the town's visitor signs.

Add a photo

PRACTICAL