Iron Horse (Abbott Pattison sculpture)

Watkinsville/Greensboro, Georgia, United States

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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The Iron Horse is a 12-foot, 2-ton abstract steel sculpture made in 1954 by Chicago artist Abbott Pattison. Moved in 1959 to a Greene County farm on Highway 15, it was restored in 2024 and reinstalled there in February 2025 after a storm toppled it.

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Iron Horse (Abbott Pattison sculpture)

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Approximate location · 33.671° N, 83.202° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

The Iron Horse is an abstract steel horse that University of Georgia students once tried to burn, and that the university has since restored and kept. Abbott Pattison, a visiting artist-in-residence from Chicago, welded it from boilerplate steel in 1954 under a Rockefeller grant. UGA gives its size as 12 feet tall and 2 tons. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says it was meant to bring contemporary art to the South; it is also called "Pegasus Without Wings".

It first stood at Reed Hall near Sanford Stadium, where students rejected it. According to the AJC, it was kept in a barn until 1959, when UGA let a Horticulture Department faculty member move it to his farm in Greene County. The land later passed to the university and is now the Iron Horse Plant Sciences Farm.

The AJC reports that students set fires at its base, covered it in crepe paper and wrote "To Hell With Tech" on it, and that it was the target of at least three attempts to set it alight. Smartphones in the 2000s turned it into a scavenger-hunt stop and brought fresh vandalism.

In 2024 conservator Amy Abbe led a restoration of about six months. The sculpture was lifted from its concrete base, cleaned, freed of corrosion and reinforced at the joints. A local artist welded on a new tail section, because the tip had rusted where it met cement and soil, and it was primed in white and finished in black. UGA reported it back in place on Highway 15 in November 2024, with a concrete plaque telling its history.

Severe storms toppled it in February 2025. The Red & Black reported it reinstalled on 18 February 2025, with minor damage to be repaired in place.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

A single steel sculpture in a pasture on the university's Iron Horse Plant Sciences Farm. According to the AJC in December 2024, a parking lot and path lead to it and signs warn visitors not to climb on it. A concrete plaque nearby gives its history.

ACCESS

Greensboro Highway (Georgia 15) between Watkinsville and Greensboro, on University of Georgia farmland, about 25 miles south of the Athens campus. According to the AJC in December 2024, a parking lot and path serve it, and signs prohibit climbing on the sculpture.

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34 km away

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