Published August 14, 2026 | Updated August 14, 2026

In downtown Omaha, you can find massive sculptures created by three of the country’s most prominent sculptors. Among them is Blair Buswell, an artist who created a third of the busts that sit inside the Pro Football Hall of Fame. 

Before helping create Omaha’s Pioneer Courage and Spirit of Nebraska’s Wilderness parks, Buswell attended Brigham Young University on an art scholarship. He also walked on to the football team and suited up on Saturdays as a reserve running back best known for his blocking.

As a teenager who loved to sculpt, he recalled touring the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio and told ESPN: “It kind of hit me that someone is doing these busts and that would be a great job to have someday.”

Buswell combined his love of art and sports as a professional sculptor. After graduating in 1982, he went on to sculpt the first of 130 Hall of Fame busts including Joe Montana, John Elway, Michael Strahan, and Steve Young, whom he protected as a teammate at BYU.  Young told the Standard-Examiner: “Here’s someone that you knew when you were a kid, and now they’re doing something of national acclaim, and you can’t believe that you both ended up in such interesting places. He is so accomplished.” 

Buswell was hired alongside sculptors Edward Fraughton and Kent Ullberg to create two parks for First National Bank of Omaha. To realize his vision, the bank hired Boody Fine Arts. After starting with 40 sculptors, it narrowed the list down to the final 11 before selecting the final three. Joining them was renowned landscape architect Jim Reeves who was in charge of creating its physical setting.

The parks were the vision of Bruce Lauritzen, whose family operated the bank for generations. At the time, he pointed out that his great-grandfather, Tom Davis, helped found the city in 1854 while the bank he led was founded three years later. The parks sit near the bank’s headquarters, First National Bank Tower. When it was completed in 2002, it was the tallest building between Chicago and Denver at 633 feet and remained the tallest in Omaha until 2025.

According to Lauritzen, the intent of both the parks was to stand as “an homage to the bravery, courage and entrepreneurial spirit that defined a generation and left an indelible impact on the American character.” 

Working alongside Buswell to create the sculptures for Pioneer Courage Park, Fraughton created the bronze sculpture “Where Trails End” in 1973 which was later displayed in Ronald Reagan’s private White House office. It was the first Gold Medal for Sculpture in the National Academy of Western Art. Ullberg was responsible for creating the bison and the geese that make up Spirit of Nebraska’s Wilderness Park. Trained as a painter before switching to sculpting, he became the first wildlife artist since John James Audubon to be elected as a full Academician of the National Academy of Design.

Visitors are encouraged to start the journey at Pioneer Courage Park at 14th and Capitol Avenue which depicts wagon trains on their journey west in 1841 along a dry creek bed. It includes pioneers with freight wagons pulled by mules, covered wagons led by oxen, and a wagon master leading the way. The park remains a work in progress with new sculptures added as recently as 2021. They include “Trading Directions” depicting Native Americans bartering goods with frontiersmen in 2019 and Mormons using a pushcart. A new sculpture modeled after Todd Schulz, a member of the American Mountain Man Association, will be added next. Of the project, he said to WOWT: “You get a little bit emotional because this is going to last a lot longer than I am.” 

After leaving Pioneer Courage Park, you head south along 15th where bison create a link between it and the park on Dodge. After seeing the wagon train, the bison form a stampede including one that cuts through the corner of a parking garage as though the structure wasn’t there. The second park sits along Dodge between 15th and 16th where 58 Canada geese are startled upon seeing the bison. They take flight from a body of water and head west through the First National Tower Winter Garden. Ullberg, who also sculpted the bison, said: “the geese transition dramatically from bronze to stainless steel to signify the evolution from the open range to a high-tech modern landscape.”

The sculptures inside Pioneer Courage Park began as a clay model, enlarged by computer and cast in bronze at 1.25 times life size to look heroic yet approachable. Too large for the bronze to support by itself, stainless-steel frames were created. The geese were created from wax that was sliced into pieces and coated in ceramic and fired until it melted away in a process known as lost-wax casting. Molten bronze and stainless steel were used to fill the voids before the pieces were welded together.

One of the largest bronze and stainless-steel art installations in the world, the two parks consist of more than 120 pieces each weighing between 400 pounds and six tons. According to Buswell, the pieces were designed to encourage interaction: “we wanted to encourage people to participate in the sculpture.” He continued, “to fall in line and walk a few steps with a larger-than-life wagon train.” The park also contains a large granite base containing 43,730 gallons of water and 2,500 tons of limestone with some of the large blocks rising 10 feet above the street.

Its landscape designer passed away in 2002, the same year Spirit of Nebraska’s Wilderness Park opened. His widow, Victoria Reeves, told the Omaha World-Herald: “This was part of his desire, to allow some spaces for people to feel like they were back in touch with Mother Earth.” Pioneer Courage Park opened in 2003 but didn’t see its first sculptures until 2005. Lauritzen, the visionary behind the two parks, passed away in 2024 before it was fully completed.

While creating bronze statues depicting the legends of the gridiron, Buswell made an unexpected stop in Omaha, one of the jumping off points for those headed west where he immortalized those wagon trains. Of the project, he said: “This is a big project, it is my Mt. Rushmore.”

Omaha Exploration, 2026. All rights reserved. Excerpts and links are welcome with full credit given to Omaha Exploration and a link back to the original content.