An artist’s rendering of an “Easy Rider” bronze sculpture the Ford County Historical Society commissioned for public display. The statue will invite passersby to join Dennis Hopper, a Dodge City native, on his iconic ride from the 1969 movie “Easy Rider.” Photo submitted by Janet Zoble

A life-sized sculpture of famed Dodge City bad boy Dennis Hopper will one day invite passersby to join him on the iconic freedom ride down the counterculture highway he immortalized in the 1969 movie “Easy Rider.”

The Ford County Historical Society has commissioned Topeka sculptress Janet Zoble to create the bronze statue, society president Kent Stehlik said, because she is sure to deliver a photo opportunity that will delight tourists and locals alike.

Zoble’s heavy metal art pieces stretch far and wide across Dodge City, and beyond. She created the famous life-sized bronze statue of Doc Holliday playing poker located on Wyatt Earp Boulevard, as well as the Trail of Fame medallions downtown, which also include a tribute to Hopper.

Zoble’s most recent addition to Dodge City’s picture postcard presentation — a bronze sculpture of Bat Masterson — will be dedicated at the city’s sesquicentennial celebration in August.

The location of the “Easy Rider” statue has yet to be determined, Stehlik said. The project has gone only so far as the artist’s rendering of the piece.

Hopper was born in Dodge City in 1936. He forged his artistic legacy as a distinctive character actor and, later in life, was a sculptor himself.

In fact, his estate donated one of Hopper’s original statues, “La Salsa Man,” to his hometown after his death in 2010. The massive statue stands at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Vine Street, near his childhood home.

Hopper wrote the script for “Easy Rider” with costar Peter Fonda, an effort that won him best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival the year it premiered.

Hopper’s visual legacy was immortalized in the flick, when he famously sat astride a custom-built Harley-Davidson motorcycle named “Billy Bike” alongside Fonda, also on a custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle they called “Captain America,” Zoble said.

The “Easy Rider” statue will be forged at the Ad Astra Art Broze Foundry in Lawrence. She said Topeka’s Deggingess Foundry, where the Holliday sculpture was forged, is no longer in operation.

Plans are still in the preliminary period, as funds are being raised to pay for the complex creation. She estimated it will probably take about two years to create.

“I’ll make part of the seat, where Hopper may have had a backpack, large enough for tourists to sit there when I sculpt it,” she promised. “I’ve done a lot of figures, and some are tricky in terms of costuming, but I’ve never tackled something like a motorcycle. I’ve been in contact with the Harley-Davidson folks in town and have their support if I need backup and consultation on parts and visuals.”

The motorcycle will likely be true to size, she said, but she may opt to cast Hopper slightly larger than his actual height.

“Dennis Hopper wasn’t a very tall person,” she said.

She described the project as “quite daunting.”

“I was excited when they presented me with this project, but then I thought ‘oh my god, can I do this?’ It’ll certainly be a fun undertaking.”

Stehlik said he plans to invite Hopper’s still-living “Easy Rider” co-star Jack Nicholson to the dedication of the statue once it is finished. Fonda died in 2019.

Roger Burnett, curator of the Ford County Legacy Center Motorsports Legends Museum, said the sculpture will certainly have broad appeal, but first and foremost it will appeal to gear heads.

“Motorcycle people don’t think of Dodge City as ‘the cowboy capital’ of the country, they think of it as ‘the motorcycle capital’ of the country,” he said. “Our racing heritage put Dodge City on the map. This sculpture will be a great draw.”

Stehlik said one can still see the tracks of the twomile motorcycle raceway that operated here in the early twentieth century from an airplane when it flies across what is now used for farmland.

For more information contact the Ford County Historical Society at info@fordcountyhistory.org.

To contact the writer, email whodgin@cherryroad.com.