🎥 Huge limestone ‘Welcome to Hays’ signs installed along I-70

The first of two limestone welcome signs was put in place Tuesday on I-70 . — The first of two limestone welcome signs was put in place Tuesday along I-70 .

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Although there were a few bumps along the way, the two new “Welcome to Hays” signs are finally going up along Interstate 70.

Footings for the huge 18′ by 10′ limestone signs were dug about 45 days ago by city workers. Tuesday, three 6′ by 10′ panels were moved into place on the south side of I-70 between Exit 157 and the Hall Street bridge. The sign will be seen by eastbound traffic approaching Hays.

The monument for westbound traffic will be placed Wednesday on the east side of Hays, north of I-70 and east of Commerce Parkway.

Tobin Rupe Stoneworks, Wichita, was the low bidder for the two signs for a total of $48,300, considerably less than the originally budgeted amount of $90,000. The money comes from the Convention and Visitors Bureau budget and is generated by the guest bed tax.

“I was a little nervous,” Rupe admitted Tuesday afternoon as his crew added filler between the stone panels and the base. “I’ve never set stones this big.”

The Flinthills limestone comes from Rupe’s farm near Eureka where he has a small stone quarry.

Rupe said he has put signs up all over Kansas and he “just had to put one up for my home school.”

He attended Fort Hays State University for three years in the mid-1980s and studied sculpture with Prof. Jim Hinkhouse and others in the art department. “There were some really good art teachers at FHSU at that time and I just got into stone carving. Then I realized we had stone on our farm and I had free stone at home to use.”

Light blue vertical lines of blue flint can faintly be seen in the side of the signs. — Light blue vertical lines of blue flint can be seen faintly in the side of the signs.

The Flinthills limestone Rupe uses is much denser than what has normally been used in Hays and the softer stone found in “Post Rock” country to the east in Russell and Ellsworth counties.

“It’s very hard,” Rupe said, and it’s also very heavy. The three pieces used in the west side monument weigh 9,000 pounds each for a combined 27,000 pounds total. Each panel is 10-inches thick. The east side marker will be a little larger with 13-inch-thick panels weighing about 30,000 pounds.

“It’s much harder to chisel but it lasts a heck of a lot longer–20 to 30 years,” Rupe said. “The inside of it is like granite.”

The slab stone was originally lying flat underground. “We basically unearthed the stone, cutting down about 14 feet into the hillside,” Rupe explained. “Then we cleared off a 50 foot area and just start pulling up slabs of stone until we get one that’s 12 foot by 14 foot so we can get a good panel out of the middle of it. There’s quite a bit of “scrap” left over, but it’s stone and it just goes back underground.”

Hess Services moves the first sign panel into place Tuesday. — A Hess Services crane operator maneuvers the first sign panel into place Tuesday with help from two Rupe crew members. (Courtesy photo)

The sign letters “WELCOME TO Hays” are hand-chiseled–one inch deep–and painted with black lithichrome, a paint specially formulated for outdoor use on stone. The simple artwork selected by city commissioners was designed by Scott Gross, an artist who has done other work for the city.

Hess Services of Hays was contracted to move the stone from Eureka to Hays and used a crane Tuesday afternoon to set the first three panels in place. The company also poured the concrete for both sign bases.

Each panel is supported by five 20-inch rebars going down into the concrete footing. The concrete was still wet late Tuesday afternoon at the first site. Rupe expected it would set up and become solid overnight. In the meantime, a number of timbers will stay lodged up against the front and back of the huge sign. “Just makes me feel better. I’ll sleep better tonight,” Rupe joked. “I don’t want to wake up and see my sign laying down on the ground.”

Rupe likes the “natural look” of the signs.

One of Tobin's crew applies — A Rupe crew member squeezes mortar repair between the limestone panels and the concrete base.

If you look closely at the sides, you can see the appearance of blue. “That’s the flint,” he pointed out. “On the outside, it’s yellow. It’s basically the same type of stone structure you have in Hays, but in the middle, it’s flint.”

And, as with other ancient limestone used in Hays, the new signs contain fossils. Rupe plans to share that information with Fort Hays State and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History.

“We went through several different ideas and this one stood out the best with the city of Hays,” he recalled. “It was actually supposed to be straight on the sides and I just kind of wanted to make it look a little bit like Kansas. If you have a real big imagination, that’s Kansas,” Rupe said with a laugh. The top of the sign is uneven and the upper right side is carved away.

sign-tobin-seashell — Rupe finds a seashell fossil on the middle panel.

Rupe has some artwork placed in downtown Wichita and location signs in several Kansas towns. He’s even taught sculpture classes in New York City and made signs for the Bronx Zoo, but he’s always had his eye on Hays.

“This is fun. I’ve always wanted to do something for the school (FHSU) or for the city of Hays. When we found out they were wanting signs, I didn’t care what it was, I was going to get the job,” he laughed again.

“Standing here, you feel kind of small,” Rupp said. “This was the biggest, but it’s not the last. This was a lot of fun.”