{"id":100874,"date":"2016-07-26T12:30:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T16:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=100874"},"modified":"2016-07-26T15:40:13","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T19:40:13","slug":"the-last-days-of-foamhenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-last-days-of-foamhenge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Days of Foamhenge"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hanover<\/a>

Photo: Brett Hanover.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019ve ever taken I-81 north through Virginia, you\u2019ve passed the town of Natural Bridge, in Rockbridge County\u2014home to a ninety-foot limestone arch that extends over a gorge, a geological anomaly probably formed by an ancient underground river. Natural Bridge is an anachronism from the Route 66 era of highway travel, a place where you can pay twenty dollars to look at a rock, eat a rock-themed lunch, and then buy a shot glass illustrated with a picture of that same rock. As any respectable tourist trap must, the town hosts a constellation of other attractions: a petting zoo, a dinosaur\/Civil War theme park, and the Natural Bridge Wax Museum (now closed, and former home to a ghoulish Obama tribute). Best of all is the featherlight, faux prehistoric monument known as Foamhenge.<\/p>\n

As its name suggests, Foamhenge is a one-to-one scale replica of Stonehenge, made of foam. It is identical to the original, save the flecked gray paint, the accompanying statue of a deadhead-ish Merlin, and the fact that it was erected several millennia later. For the past twelve years, the henge has been the most public of Natural Bridge\u2019s draws, garnering a steady stream of visitors and enough press to be mentioned in the same breath as the area\u2019s actual ancient rocks. Its creator, an artist named Mark Cline, calls it his \u201cfoam-nomenon\u201d: the unlikely culmination of his career as a sculptor of roadside attractions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Foamhenge is slated to close for good this August, when the property will be repurposed as a state park. Cline is looking for a new home for his sculpture\u2014something that\u2019s proved challenging, he says, since he\u2019s been busy opening a new dinosaur theme park, Dinosaur Kingdom II. (The first Dinosaur Kingdom burned down in 2012.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like I\u2019m trying to fight a war on two fronts,\u201d Cline said when I passed through the area in mid-July. \u201cI\u2019m exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo: Brett Hanover.<\/p><\/div>\n

Cline\u2019s home base is an all-purpose fabrication shop called Enchanted Castle Studios. The front yard is full of Frankensteinian visions of 1970s Americana: a giant female head and a humanoid-hair metal gorilla coexist with boat-size ants and slime monsters. A mutant dinosaur stands harmoniously alongside a giant, Valhalla-bound chicken beast. The effect is more charming than scary\u2014the monsters look friendly, familial. Cline says he builds them as a way for people to confront their fears.<\/p>\n

Cline is a handsome, slight man in his fifties. He moves like a guy who could perform a card trick without breaking eye contact. He speaks softly, in a tone that makes statements like \u201cI\u2019m worn out from building a giant albino dinosaur\u201d seem reasonable. When I visited his studios, he was showing a family around the property\u2014a teenage girl in Chucks and a DINOSAUR KINGDOM II<\/small> T-shirt, along with her parents\u2014but he directed me to his fabrication shop, where disembodied wax heads, salvaged from the old wax museum, lined the walls. Cline\u2019s assistant, Melvin, a powerful-looking guy with tribal tattoos, sawed a stand for a cardboard cutout of Cline, costumed as a magician. A pair of disembodied dinosaur claws lay ominously in a corner.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo: Eileen Townsend.<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s an origin story to the Enchanted Castle: When Mark Cline was in elementary school, he was not good at reading. This was in a time when there was no recourse for kids with dyslexia, so Cline was placed in a slow-learners class, an experience that gave him time and encouragement to make art and taught him compassion. Later, when he was in his early twenties and out of work, he drew on his early experience. He decided he wanted to make things that could inspire and heal. He wanted to create magic, which he defines, in a handwritten note that hangs above his desk, as \u201cthe ability to transform certain perceived realities into impossible scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Foamhenge and the Dinosaur Kingdoms, he\u2019s behind a ghost tour, a magic show, an active prop shop that\u2019s produced everything from Broadway set pieces to a giant skull for Alice Cooper, a defunct Monster Museum (apparently destroyed in a 2001 arson by fundamentalist Christians), something called \u201cCap\u2019n Cline\u2019s Pirate Adventure Ride and the Mummy\u2019s Tomb of Doom,\u201d a forthcoming mini-golf course, and an enchanted forest. His wife, Sherry, is the business mind of the operation. When we met, he showed me a picture of her on the brochure for his magic show, dressed in a red dress and looking slightly bemused. \u201cShe\u2019s my Roy Disney,\u201d he said affectionately.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo: Eileen Townsend.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Cline and the touring family joined me in the fabrication studio, I was examining a fiberglass visage of Stonewall Jackson, who was missing an arm. He placed a hand on the Jackson mold, and announced matter-of-factly, \u201cThis is going to be for \u2018Stonewall Jackson Battling a Spinosaurus.\u2019 We are creating a bionic arm for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, that\u2019s great!\u201d said the teenager\u2019s mom.<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cThis story takes place in 1864. Everyone thought Jackson died, but, in our world \u2026 don\u2019t let the secret out, but he changed his identity and went through a brand-new program called the witness-protection program. He bit the bullet and joined P.\u2009T. Barnum in New York and became the bearded lady. Really threw off suspicion.\u201d<\/p>\n

He directed our attention toward a storyboard pinned to the wall of the studio, where a cartoon Abe Lincoln wrangled a winged dinosaur with a piece of paper in its mouth. \u201cAnd there\u2019s a Troodon with the Gettysburg chat!\u201d he said. \u201cYou know that Abe Lincoln originally called it a \u2018chat\u2019? They changed it to \u2018address\u2019 to be more formal.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked about a recurrent character in the drawings, a green slime monster that Cline referred to as Mr. Slime. \u201cThe slime characters!\u201d Cline explained, as if he\u2019d just remembered that he\u2019d left something on the stove for too long. \u201cBack in the seventies there was a TV series called Slime Theater<\/em>, a late-night horror show with one of those guys who would, you know, come out of a coffin \u2026 But this guy, he didn\u2019t come out with a cape or anything. He was more like a hippie. He wore a T-shirt and smoked cigarettes. Would keep a beer in the fridge behind the couch. This was the seventies, so everything was rat fink and psychedelic art. Their character was Mr. Slime, very R. Crumb. I sort of took him and adopted him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo: Brett Hanover.<\/p><\/div>\n

He looked around, taking account of the giant blocks of post-industrial foam and comic spreads. \u201cI\u2019m John Henry here,\u201d he said. \u201cI do everything old-school.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family left and we walked toward his office, which was fronted by a bronze-looking sculpture of Cline holding hands with one of the many Mr. Slimes. I asked about the fate of Foamhenge, and Cline looked deflated. \u201cAll you\u2019ve got to do is Google foamhenge<\/em>\u00a0and there\u2019s probably\u201d\u2014he sighed\u2014\u201ca thousand pictures of it. It\u2019s been on TV shows, the Discovery Channel, BBC, in Japan. It really surprises me, considering I just made it as an April Fools\u2019 joke in 2004. It was an easy installation. When I unveiled it for the media, I even did a sort of David Copperfield. I phased through a block of foam.\u201d (Cline calls his magic hobby, which includes things like \u201cphasing\u201d through foam and riding unicycles through rings, \u201cthe art of misdirection.\u201d)<\/p>\n

And how did people react when they heard that Foamhenge could close?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the news first hit, I got calls from all over the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t pick up the phone for a week. Everyone was trying to tell me why they needed Foamhenge. Why they needed it in their backyard, or for their community.\u201d He seemed flustered. \u201cAnd I\u2019m trying to build a dinosaur theme park, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo: Brett Hanover.<\/p><\/div>\n

Cline got a lot of calls, but no suitable takers. He decided he needed to narrow his criteria. He wants Foamhenge to remain in the area, to drive business, to stay public, and to fit well on whatever land it eventually occupies. But he\u2019s encountered a host of bureaucratic problems. One interested town is in debt from a golf course. Another didn\u2019t want to pay for the installation. Cline said that it can be political. Nearby city councils apparently have a hard time justifying the installation and upkeep of a ring of giant foam blocks and a hippie wizard, no matter how timeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to convince people in the state that it does well for the state,\u201d he said. \u201cBut everything is a liability now. Some of them liked the idea but didn\u2019t want to take responsibility for it.\u201d As he spoke, he picked up an oversized straitjacket on a coatrack. I looked out his office window toward a yard full of beautiful liabilities. A boxy foam robot peered back at me through the blinds.<\/p>\n

Cline is holding out hope. With the help of websites like Roadside America, the nostalgic interest in roadside attractions is bigger than it has been since the fifties and sixties. \u201cEverything is different now,\u201d Cline said of the roadside attraction economy. \u201cI think in some ways there is even more of an interest. It\u2019s all this good Americana-type stuff. People say, \u2018We don\u2019t want this to go away. This is a part of who we are.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo: Brett Hanover.<\/p><\/div>\n

The morning was getting late, so I said good-bye to Cline and headed toward Dinosaur Kingdom II, where I followed a winding path through a series of large tableaus: civil-war soldiers fighting tyrannosauruses, a man milking a cowlike dino, an ominous chapel, a long-necked animatronic beast stowed in a gimmicky outhouse. It was better than any mystery spot this side of the Mississippi. I bought a T-shirt and thought about what Cline had said about his work: how he hopes it\u2019s a force for the good. I think it is. The park made no great claims for itself\u2014an absurd revisionist history of the Civil War notwithstanding\u2014but it offered a chance to get outside my head, to forget my daily concerns. I thought, instead, about the consequences of a run-in between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and General Ulysses S. Grant.<\/p>\n

A mile up the road, I climbed the hill to Foamhenge. Styrofoam has a half life of anywhere from five hundred\u00a0years to forever, but it\u2019s an inglorious forever: the henge could use a fresh coat of stone-colored latex paint, as could Merlin. But no weathering could eclipse the weirdo joy of the place and its guardian. That morning, it was peaceful, a perceived reality transformed into an impossible scenario. Standing there, I felt as light as foam.<\/p>\n

Eileen Townsend<\/a> is a journalist from Memphis, Tennessee. She writes about visionary art and the South.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever taken I-81 north through Virginia, you\u2019ve passed the town of Natural Bridge, in Rockbridge County\u2014home to a ninety-foot limestone arch that extends over a gorge, a geological anomaly probably formed by an ancient underground river. Natural Bridge is an anachronism from the Route 66 era of highway travel, a place where you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":793,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[23545,5016,1354,23542,15177,23546,35,23532,23533,23537,23548,23530,23538,23535,23529,6253,9436,23531,6823,22128,23540,6813,133,23534,23547,964,23541,2625,23544,23536,23543,23549,8551,23539,2927,6737],"class_list":["post-100874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-abe-lincoln","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-alice-cooper","tag-american-sights","tag-americana","tag-ancient","tag-art","tag-dinosaur-kingdom","tag-dinosaur-kingdom-ii","tag-dinosaur-theme-park","tag-economy","tag-elieen-townsend","tag-enchanted-castle-studios","tag-foam","tag-foamhenge","tag-gettysburg","tag-john-henry","tag-mark-cline","tag-merlin","tag-mini-golf","tag-monstor-museum","tag-p-t-barnum","tag-r-crumb","tag-reconstruction","tag-roadside-america","tag-sculpture","tag-sight-seeing","tag-south","tag-southern","tag-state-park","tag-stonewall-jackson","tag-tyrannosaurs-rex","tag-ulysses-s-grant","tag-valhalla","tag-vaudeville","tag-virginia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Last Days of Foamhenge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Virginia\u2019s Foamhenge, a treasured roadside replica of Stonehenge made of foam, may be closing for good.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-last-days-of-foamhenge\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Last Days of Foamhenge by Eileen Townsend\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 26, 2016 \u2013 If you\u2019ve ever taken I-81 north through Virginia, you\u2019ve passed the town of Natural Bridge, in Rockbridge County\u2014home to a ninety-foot limestone arch that\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-last-days-of-foamhenge\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-07-26T16:30:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-07-26T19:40:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/hanover-2810-24.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1545\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Eileen Townsend\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Eileen Townsend\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-last-days-of-foamhenge\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-last-days-of-foamhenge\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Eileen Townsend\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d8e8d89ad41be37dc2ebe16900bd3de9\"},\"headline\":\"The Last Days of Foamhenge\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-07-26T16:30:20+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-26T19:40:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-last-days-of-foamhenge\/\"},\"wordCount\":1884,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-last-days-of-foamhenge\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/hanover-2810-24-1024x663.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Abe Lincoln\",\"Abraham Lincoln\",\"Alice Cooper\",\"American sights\",\"Americana\",\"ancient\",\"art\",\"Dinosaur Kingdom\",\"Dinosaur Kingdom II\",\"dinosaur theme park\",\"economy\",\"Elieen Townsend\",\"Enchanted Castle Studios\",\"foam\",\"Foamhenge\",\"Gettysburg\",\"John Henry\",\"Mark Cline\",\"Merlin\",\"mini-golf\",\"Monstor Museum\",\"P.T. 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