Sculpting a family legacy in Hughes Park

Standing tall atop a hill of Southeast Missouri limestone at the entrance to Hughes Park in Cedar Rapids is an unexpected sight: a life-size metal sculpture of a draft horse pulling a cultivator.

This sculpture is the Hughes Horse, and in many ways it tells the story of the land where the park is built — and the family who worked and nurtured the land and who accommodated the city with a seven-acre recreation area.

Hughes Park, located on Wilson Avenue in Southwest Cedar Rapids, sits on the former location of Hughes Nursery, which was founded in 1908 by William John Hughes, an immigrant from Wales who discovered a passion for growing plants and trees.

In the 1970s, as the city of Cedar Rapids grew around the property, Dwight Hughes Jr., William’s grandson, moved the nursery business to its current location south of Highway 30. Later, in the early 2000s, he started thinking about turning the land, which was now a wooded oasis surrounded by homes, into a park as a way to pass on a piece of the Hughes legacy to the community that supported the family landscape nursery business.

“It’s a lot more fun to share it than to have it,” Hughes said.

One thing Hughes wanted for the park was a centerpiece that could pay tribute to his family and the nursery business his grandfather founded over 100 years ago, and he settled on the image of a draft horse, the kind that his grandfather had once used to work the land.

“Grandpa started with Belgian horses,” Hughes said. “That was something I could grab hold of.” Horses are strong, powerful and steady, in much the same way as the family business evolved. “A multigenerational business like ours is rare,” he said.

At the 2015 Iowa State Fair, Hughes came across a metal sculpture of a horse, called “The Young Prince,” and instantly knew a sculpture like this would be perfect for his park — a gift to the Cedar Rapids visual arts community that could turn the park into a destination for visitors from Eastern Iowa and beyond.

“I was impressed,” Hughes said. “I had never seen anything like it.” But the artist’s name was nowhere to be found, and despite his diligent attempts to find the person who had made it, Hughes came up empty. As it happened, the artist who made “The Young Prince,” Steve Huffman, was also in the landscaping business. And a few years later, unaware of Hughes’ interest in his work, Huffman sought out Hughes for a project of his own.

While working on a landscaping project at Rathbun Lake in 2019, Huffman found himself in need of large trees and went to Hughes Nursery hoping to buy some. Dwight himself wasn’t there, but his sons, John and Tom, who now own the nursery, recognized the horse sculpture on Huffman’s business card and immediately called their dad to tell him they’d found the artist he’d been looking for.

“It’s interesting how life brings you in connection with people,” Huffman said. Incidentally, there were no trees available for Huffman’s project that day. “To this day Mr. Hughes hasn’t sold me a tree,” he said, smiling.

When Hughes arrived, the two men began what would become a strong friendship, and a fruitful business partnership.

“After having met him, I can see why he is so precision-oriented and dedicated to quality,” Huffman said. “That’s the kind of customer I like.”

Huffman, who has always been interested in art, began creating his metal sculptures in 2010 as a way to accent his landscape designs. His MetalScapes, as he calls them, are made mostly of steel and iron scrap that he cuts, grinds and welds into impressive forms.

“This is my therapy,” Huffman said. “This is how I relax.”

The Hughes Horse, Huffman’s fourth MetalScape horse, is modeled after one of Hughes’ own draft horses, a Percheron gelding named Mike.

For Huffman, getting the details just right was about more than taking measurements. He wanted to give his sculpture the illusion of life and movement, and to do that he spent hours observing and photographing Hughes’ Percherons.

“I watched his horses walk, trot, every direction, every angle I could get,” Huffman said. “There are so many different breeds of horses. You need to know the bone structure, the shape of the head.”

It took 10 months to create the Hughes Horse, which is made almost entirely of steel and iron materials like hoe heads, shovel heads, hand tools, machinery parts, chains and gears.

Selecting the right materials is a careful process, Huffman said. “If the piece doesn’t show muscle tone or have structure, I stop,” he said.

Some of the pieces used in the sculpture were given to him by Hughes, including several horseshoes. And the cultivator that the Hughes Horse is pulling is one that was used by William Hughes himself, his son, and his grandson.

Throughout the sculpture are nods to the Hughes family, including the Hughes Nursery tree logo, a Welsh Dragon, oak leaves, and a letter “H”con the horse’s forehead, which standscfor both Hughes and Huffman.

Dwight Hughes is proud of his family history and humbled by it, determined to nurture both the land and the business his father and grandfather built and pass that legacy on to future generations — not just of the Hughes family, but of families across Cedar Rapids and out-of-town visitors as well.

“To work with an individual like Dwight Hughes and his family makes it special,” Huffman said. “It’s an honor and a privilege. Not every sculpture is as personal, or as tied to a site.”