A long time dream for the city of McLoud has come to fruition with a mural painted on the south side of a large building.
The mural was painted by well-known artist Bob Palmer and two assistants.
Melanie Krausse, director of the McLoud Chamber of Commerce, said, “It’s a small way of telling our story.” She added that the mural captures part of the city’s history.
McLoud has been celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.
The mural, a tribute to McLoud, stretches across the south side of the building bordering the McLoud Cafe parking lot at the northeast corner of Broadway and Main (SH 102 and U.S. 270).
“It was hard to whittle down,” she said, in describ ing what the mural depicts. “We were specific in what we wanted and what we didn’t want,” Krausse stressed.
Krausse explained, “Actually, the idea of a mural has been tossed around for more than a decade. Last year, the idea was rehashed to look back into it and I began researching.”
Around March or April, about the time the Coronavirus hit, “We started getting serious about it and the general consensus was we wanted to use Palmer.”
But there were some hangups at first, apparently. Krausse said, “Money was one, and the other was the owner of that building resides out of town and we needed his approval. It’s such a large building,” she noted.
“We’ve had some successful Blackberry Festivals over the last four or five years where the Chamber has generated funds to do it. It was a good time to do it,” she indicated, “and we now had the means to do it.
“We finally had the mon ey to do something the community would be proud of,” she believes.
Krausse said, “Palmer won us over by just his quality of work and his initial estimate was something that we could afford. He was much more realistic in his pricing. We knew we would be getting top quality,” she emphasized.
Other artists were contacted, she said, and some were three and four times higher than the estimate Palmer provided.
“I didn’t realize murals I had seen in other cities and towns were his,” Krausse commented, mentioning Chandler, Davenport, Oklahoma City and Downtown Oklahoma City.
Another person who played an essential role in the mural was Glenda Kuhn with the McLoud Historical Society.
Krausse said of Kuhn, “she is a gem, a treasure for the city of McLoud.”
She pointed out that time and again she went to Kuhn for assistance in her research and each time Kuhn provided what she needed. She said the Chamber provided a special “thank you to Kuhn for her wealth of knowledge and input to make key components of the design as historically accurate as possible.”
Krausse said Palmer started painting the mural on Thursday, Dec. 3, and it was finished by Saturday evening, three days later.
She estimates the mural is 25-30 feet tall, about 100 feet wide. “It didn’t take him long once he got started. He has two assistants who helped him,” she added.
“We would like to have a dedication but nothing has been planned at all yet,” Krausse said.