An inquisitive traveler can drive past Bruco, the giant concrete caterpillar resting alongside the highway in Italy, Texas, only so many times before the siren call of curiosity wins out. Lured in by its goofy smile, iron antennae, and tilted cowboy boots, intrepid road warriors often pull off Interstate 35 to get answers. But people often get lost in search of Bruco, says Gary Clark, the vice president and director of marketing for Monolithic Constructors Inc. “They’ll come in and say, ‘It took me three tries to get here!’”
Clark’s father-in-law was David South, the late co-founder of Monolithic Constructors and creator of the organization’s unofficial mascot, Bruco. Fascinated by monolithic domes, South and his two brothers, Barry and Randy, built their first iteration of a dome structure in 1976 in Shelly, Idaho, initially to store the Gem State’s famed export—potatoes. Spud storage led to dome houses (the first built for their mother) and churches dotting the Idaho countryside.
Soon, Monolithic Domes began building structures across America. Around 1980, Barry claimed the Mountain West as the location for his dome company, and David and Randy looked elsewhere for a place to establish their manufacturing and stage their domination.
South had built a fair amount of domes in Texas, and began exploring the state as a potential home base. He landed on Italy, about an hour south of Dallas, because he saw a for-sale sign by the side of the road, and when he went to look at the land, he said his arm got tired from waving at all the friendly folks in town. That’s how he knew Italy, also home to the Tour d’Italia bike race with both 30 and 64-mile-routes, was the place to stay.
Not to say it was always a cordial welcome. Initially, a local group, unused to the proliferation of dome structures in what is otherwise sleepy cattle country, started a petition against the company and demanded it leave, unnerved by the unusual structures suddenly appearing on their local horizon. But some 30 years hence, and Monolithic Constructors is a key part of the community. The Italy High School Gym is a monolithic dome structure, and Monolithic even created a dome painted like an igloo that housed a Santa for the local Christmas parade.
When I went in search of Monolithic’s most famous structure, I, too, discovered the headquarters is a bit hard to find. Though alongside the highway, it isn’t located directly beside the exit. Instead, aided by trusty Google maps, I swung through some pretty farmland and back roads to seek out Clark and the domes.
Driving into the complex feels a little like driving into a 1950s vision of America’s future neighborhoods. Behind Bruco lie little streets dotted with domes and carports. The entire family, including several of the Souths and the Clarks, live in Monolithic dome houses, and the company rents out apartment domes to locals. Anyone can take a free tour, a longstanding tradition for Monolithic. Clark tells me that back when his father-in-law was alive, he had his residence here. “[David] just loved to show the house,” Clark says. “It was always a little threatening if ever you were over there. You’d better make sure you were not taking a shower, because he could show up any minute with anyone who wanted to see the house.”
Clark’s eyes light up when he talks about dome construction. Monolithic Domes holds workshops throughout the year, teaching others how to build their own domes. Their website boasts of new and significant builds, including a triple dome home built by Brigham Young University students, a dome dream home in Yucaipa, California, with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean, and a space for a humpback whale exhibit at the Maui Ocean Center aquarium park in Hawaii. The company also produces educational podcasts and even has a nonprofit arm, Domes for the World Foundation, to improve “the lives of people worldwide by promoting and providing safe and sustainable shelter,” creating domes for people in places like Haiti, Indonesia, and Ethiopia.
As for the headquarters, there are over 150 domes on the property, including the seven connected domes that comprise the main manufacturing space and make up Bruco, which means caterpillar in Italian. Monolithic dome designs involve large balloons that are cut out of dense, durable material, stitched together. Then polyurethane spray is added, followed by rebar and a type of concrete that together make the walls up to 6 inches thick. Back when they erected the domes for Bruco in 1995, the job was big enough that the balloons were left inflated and lit from within by sodium lights. “Truckers had to drive by and wonder, what is this glowworm by the road?” Clark says.
Inside, Bruco is cavernous and cool at 60 feet wide and 250 feet long. Two large machines stretch the length of the building: one to cut the patterns for the balloons and the other to sew them together. Anne Sutherland, a former Monolithic employee who now works as an events coordinator at Italy City Hall, helped paint Bruco more than 25 years ago. She assures me, as does Gary, that Bruco will get a facelift with new paint sometime in the next year or so. The cowboy boots will stay, though those boots occasionally mislead visitors.
Sutherland says that when people come into town and stop at city hall, they often will remark that they saw the caterpillar with boots and say, “I can’t find the boot shop, where is the boot shop?” She laughs and says that some people even think it’s a cult. Gary confirms this, recounting the time a woman drove up in a VW bus. Dressed in all black, she walked up to the Monolithic Construction secretary and whispered, “How do I join?”
