Spirit of the Rivers monument

A man carries a birch bark canoe on his shoulders up from Lake Michigan, a woman follows with their belongings, and an elder shows the way. The group, cast in bronze, stands on the lakeshore along Mariners Trail on the boundary between Two Rivers and Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

The project's own site says each figure is about ten feet tall and the canoe is about 20 feet long, and that the sculpture weighs more than three tons. It was made by R.T. "Skip" Wallen, a Manitowoc native who began as a wildlife biologist and artist in Alaska and later made public bronzes in the United States and Europe. Wallen worked from a one-eighth scale maquette completed in 2013, then built full-size figures in foam and clay in a Manitowoc studio, before molds went to a fine art foundry in Oregon for casting.