Little Sister of Lady Liberty

This is a small copy of the Statue of Liberty, and there is a story behind why so many towns across the heartland have one.

In nineteen fifty, the Boy Scouts of America marked their fortieth anniversary with a campaign they called Strengthen the Arm of Liberty. Scout troops and local service clubs across the country raised money, usually about three hundred fifty dollars apiece, to put up their own miniature Lady Liberty.

A Chicago company built them by wrapping forty-two stamped copper sheets around an inner frame, the same number of pieces in the real statue's design. Roughly two hundred were installed, most of them right here across the Midwest, and most were standing by the end of nineteen fifty-one. This one was dedicated as a pledge of loyalty, a Scout's promise cast in copper to the freedom of these United States.