History

The Monument began with a 1997 feasibility memorandum by the Pine Barrens Beautification Committee, which noted that the town lay 41 miles from the nearest attraction listed in any state publication. The following spring the committee secured a $15,000 grant from the Wyoming Division of Tourism's Roadside Enhancement Program, on an application that promised, in its entirety, 'a permanent installation celebrating rest.' The 22 tables were sourced at no cost from decommissioned rest areas, county park inventories, and one Forest Service district that required the committee to sign for them individually. Each table arrived with an intake tag recording its origin, a practice the committee has maintained since.

For the design, the committee engaged Clarence O'Malley, a local artist known for working in found objects, whose fee was recorded in the minutes as $1,200 and one table. O'Malley arranged the tables in a zig-zag ascending the hill, a formation he described in his artist's statement as 'the path of leisure, interrupted.' The tables were repainted in bright greens and blues intended to evoke Wyoming's summer skies and meadowlands, using surplus paint donated by the school district, which explains the two tables in gymnasium gold. Anchoring the tables to poured concrete footings ran $3,120 over estimate, a fact the committee treasurer noted at four consecutive meetings.

Construction took four months and was not without incident. In June 1998, a windstorm crossed the hill and knocked seven tables out of alignment, one of them fully off its footing, delaying the dedication by a month while O'Malley re-surveyed the zig-zag with stakes and twine. The dedication was finally held that August, attended by the Division of Tourism's regional coordinator, who cut a ribbon strung between tables eleven and twelve and described the monument, in remarks preserved by the committee, as 'certainly here now.'

The monument has since settled into a maintenance rhythm: footings inspected each May, paint refreshed through the annual festival's painting contest, and the intake tags re-laminated on a five-year cycle. In 2003 the committee formally declined a donated 23rd table from a family relocating to Casper, ruling by a 5–2 vote that 'the composition is complete.' The table was accepted instead by the community center, where it sits near the parking lot, facing the monument.

Local Legends

Some residents insist the tables are quietly rearranged during the festival each June, and cite as evidence the paint lines that do not quite match their boards. The committee attributes this to the painting contest, the wind, and the general behavior of paint, and has offered to walk skeptics up the hill with the survey stakes, an offer no one has yet accepted.

It is repeated in Pine Barrens that eating a full meal at the topmost table brings good luck, a belief the committee neither endorses nor discourages, since the topmost table is the farthest walk and visitors who make it tend to speak well of the experience regardless of subsequent fortune.

A persistent story holds that one of the 22 tables still bears initials carved at a Yellowstone-area rest stop in 1961, and that the family responsible has visited twice. The intake tags neither confirm nor rule this out, which the committee secretary has called 'the correct amount of documentation.'

The Controversy

In 2001, the Pine Barrens Historical Society moved to have the tables designated historical artifacts, noting that several predate 1965 and one may predate the county. The designation would have placed the monument under preservation guidelines prohibiting repainting — and therefore the festival's painting contest. The dispute ran through six joint meetings and a written opinion from the county attorney before the tables were entered in the municipal inventory under a category created for the purpose: 'furniture, exterior, commemorative.' Both bodies have described the outcome as workable, and the Historical Society now judges the painting contest.

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