COOPER, Iowa, July 6, 2006 – An unusual attraction completed for the Quasquicentennial celebration June 30-July 2 in this town of 30 people on the Raccoon River Valley Trail is a stand of dead maple trees now called “The Most Colorful Trees in Greene County.” 

The trees, all 8 to 10 feet tall, were planted in the spring of 2005 by community volunteers, along the west side of the trail. All six died, and were scheduled to be removed and replaced this summer.

“We got behind on that project, and we were standing there wondering what to do about the trees before the celebration, and it hit me: We could paint them!” said Carla Offenburger, president of the Committee for a Super Cooper, the community club which sponsored the celebration. She is also president of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association. 

“Sara Valentine is an artist who lives right outside town, and she jumped on that idea,” Offenburger continued. “She said she’d do them up in bright colors, paint some extra little designs on them and see what they become. 

“Do you remember when Chicago had the painted cows around the city, and then Des Moines had the painted pigs? In Cooper, we have painted dead trees. It’s art!”

Valentine has involved her husband James and young sons in the public art project. The family is shown in the photo here, along with two of the trees.

The colorful trees will stand at least through the end of the cycling season in the fall.

Article Published: 07-06-2006