If you’re driving along South Preston Street between Zanzabar + St. Stephen Cemetery, three buffalo might stop you dead in your tracks.
Okay, so they’re not real buffalo, but the blue-hued buffalo family made of wood and wire are a representation of the 2,000-pound herbivores — also called bison — that used to walk there.
DYK: Bison are the largest mammal in North America?
The buffalo art pieces hanging on a privacy fence at the intersection of Preston and Brandeis are part of a larger, ongoing project dubbed “Follow the Buffalo.”
A subcommittee of the Saint Joseph Area Association started the cause + look to raise funds to commission a public buffalo sculpture on the Parkway Village median.
The art piece aims to beautify the area, as well as commemorate the natural history of Wilderness Road — a trail that ran through the area in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Wilderness Road was stamped out by migrating animals centuries ago, leading the way for human movement from as far East as New Jersey to Kentucky and beyond.
Thousands of pioneers traveled the trail from 1775-1811 + it was also the lifeline for George Rogers Clark’s army at the Falls of the Ohio during the Revolutionary War.
Other Louisville-area communities have honored the historic road and paid homage to the bison that once roamed here — like Buffalo Trace Park in Palmyra, IN.
Donations to help commemorate our stretch of trail — today known as Preston Highway + Preston Street — can be made here.
