Boy and the Boot
El Paso, Texas
El Paso's Boy and the Boot statue arrived in town from New York in 1901, the prize "booty" of a taxpayer-funded junket taken by one of El Paso's aldermen. For five decades the Boy served as a fountain for City Hall Park.
In the 1950s the Boy was moved to San Jacinto Plaza, where he coexisted for a time in a pond with the city's famous alligators. The alligators were removed in 1965; the Boy followed some time later.
He was rediscovered in an El Paso storage yard in the 1990s, dry and bleached by the Texas sun. Funds were raised, local artist Bill Rakocy went to work, and in 1995 the restored Boy -- clad in a new coating of metal -- was placed in the lobby of El Paso's city hall.
Having become an official El Paso relic rather than a fountain, the Boy and his no-longer-leaking Boot now stands on the second floor of the El Paso Museum of History.
Pile o' Gators Statue (Plaza de los Lagartos)
Pancho Villa Handshake Statue
Chamizal National Memorial: It Used To Be In Mexico
