The bicentennial mural that started as a vision in the mind’s eye of a handful of Athens High School art students will for generations reflect a community passionate about its history.

Completed Oct. 14, the mural was paid for by a bicentennial grant from the state. Located on the side of the Wildwood Deli building facing Market Street, the mural includes images of budding cotton fields, an old steam engine hearkening back to the days of the Tennessee and Central Alabama Railway, Big Spring Park and just about every historic building in Limestone County.

Beverly Bobo, the AHS art teacher who applied for the grant and spearheaded the project, said the mural is based solely on student input. A group of seven dedicated art students designed the mural piece-by-piece, collaborating with their teachers and city leaders to come up with a final design that conjured up the best of Athens.

AHS art students teamed up with Bobo and Leah Pierce, an art teacher at SPARK Academy at Cowart and HEART Academy at Julian Newman Elementary, to make the mural a reality. All told, the group of about 14 students and teachers put in countless hours after school and on the weekends to complete the mural.

Senior student Tucker Constable was one of them. Devoting more than 30 hours to detail work on the bicentennial banner, fields of cotton and the towering Greek pillars that flank the mural, Constable said he hopes future generation will look at the painting and say, “Hey, this represents out city really well.”

In addition to trumpeting Athens’ rich history for years to come, the mural has given the students a voice, Bobo said.

“What happens in the art world so often is that our students have all this talent, but sometimes I don’t think they are heard,” she said. “I think it is important for them to have a voice. By painting the mural, our students show their skills and that they have something beautiful to offer our community.”

While painting, Bobo said passers-by would often stop and ask the students questions.

“That really tickled the kids and boosted their confidence,” she said. “As the wall progressed, you could see how much the students improved their skills and learned from one another. It is really nice when you get a group of kids like that together.”

Just as Bobo had hoped, the $2,000 grant from the state more than covered the cost of the project. The rest of the money will go toward a community-wide scavenger hunt that will coincide with the Athens Bicentennial Celebration on Nov. 17.

Scavenger hunt

Organized by some of the same students who worked on the mural, the hunt is designed to inspire community members to dig even deeper into the city’s history. The event will start at the mural, where participants will choose a historical site or an icon to find in the city. Once they find it, they will get more clues, sometimes in the form of a recorded history. Bobo said students are still actively working on the recorded histories for the scavenger hunt.

Prizes will be awarded to the first three who complete the hunt the fastest on the day of the bicentennial bash.