Diablo

It's been a while since I've featured the general on this blog -- General Palmer that is, our city's founder. This statue of him astride his horse Diablo sits right smack in the middle of the intersection of Nevada and Platte Avenues. Some people have an issue with that, but really, how hard is it to drive around a statue? It's been there since September of 1929. You'd think that people would have figured out how to navigate around it by now.

Ironically, it was a riding accident that killed the man. I don't know if Diablo was his choice of steed that day, but I've heard that Palmer had been trying to do some kind of stunt at a full gallop and fell off his horse. He was paralyzed, and though he lived on for three more years, I'm sure his overall health was quite negatively affected by the accident. He died in 1909. Now he's immortalized in this statue, right in front of the high school that's named after him.