Ken Fox's Great Statues of Auburn — Roadside & Outdoor Oddities in Sacramento

Entry No. 5 — the Sacramento file — filed under: folk-art environment

Ken Fox's Great Statues of Auburn

A small-town dentist named Ken Fox (1925–2020) spent nights from the late 1960s on pouring concrete over rebar in the lot behind his own dental practice, eventually raising a 42-foot, 120-ton nude "Amazon archer" and a chained male nude ('Chains of Bondage') — allegorical mythological figures still looming over Auburn Ravine Road. Two of his high-school-age sons helped mix the concrete by hand.

The move: Wander the open-air lot of Cold-War-era concrete giants (some 30-42 ft tall, weighing up to 120 tons) behind Fox's old dental office, then drive a few minutes to the Gold Rush Museum on Lincoln Way to find the 22-foot, 35-ton laborer-with-wheelbarrow statue Fox relocated there in 1989, plus the 45-ton Claude Chana gold-miner statue he built for the town's Gold Rush centennial in 1975.

Where: 391 Auburn Ravine Road, Auburn, CA 95603

Hours: Added 2026-07-20 — confirm current hours before you go.

#folk-art environment #giant sculpture #concrete #outsider art #day trip

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Further reading: Roadside America · Atlas Obscura · spacesarchives.org · loc.gov

last checked: 2026-07-20