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Tuska is a 19-foot, seven-ton bronze African bull elephant outside Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. English sculptor Terry Mathews made it for the NorthRiver Yacht Club in 2000, and it moved to campus in April 2021.
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Tuska bronze elephant (19 ft 7 ton)
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Site-level location · 33.2081° N, 87.5503° W
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Alabama's teams are the Crimson Tide, but their mascot is an elephant, and from 2021 a very large bronze one has stood beside the football stadium. The Tuscaloosa News traced the elephant link to the 1930 season, when sportswriters began calling the team's crimson-jerseyed linemen "Red Elephants".
Tuska is a bronze African bull elephant, 19 feet tall and seven tons, made by English sculptor Terry Mathews. The Crimson White reports that Mathews was raised in Uganda, worked as a safari guide and began sculpting without formal training. The statue was commissioned as "Reach for the Sky" by Jack Warner, longtime head of Gulf States Paper Co., later Westervelt Co., for the NorthRiver Yacht Club in Tuscaloosa. Because a foundry could pour only about two tons at a time, the Crimson White says it was cast in 11 pieces in Gloucestershire, England, from 1999, shipped by boat on 7 September 2000 and assembled in Tuscaloosa over about a year.
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WHAT TO EXPECT
A large bronze elephant on a pedestal in a landscaped plaza beside the stadium, lit at night. In 2023 the Tuscaloosa News described it as a fan favourite for photographs on football days. It is on university grounds.
ACCESS
At the corner of University Boulevard and Wallace Wade Avenue, beside Bryant-Denny Stadium on the University of Alabama campus. As of 2023 it stood in an open plaza with sidewalks around it; crowds gather on home football days.
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