Had you been listening to tactical radio traffic during the devastating 2024 Smokehouse Creek fire, you would have heard firefighters in Canadian referring to “Aud” as they navigated smoke-filled roads and fence lines. As the fire moved and grew, they would say things like, “It’s 1 mile south of Aud.”
Aud, it should be mentioned, is a big green dinosaur. She survived the largest wildfire in Texas history.
This unusual navigational landmark, built of concrete and steel, stands on a windswept mesa overlooking where US 60 and 83 converge, south of town. A handmade brontosaurus painted Sinclair green, Aud is fairly life-size, at 50 feet long and 17 feet tall.
“She is very much a marker,” says Wendie Murfee Cook, Canadian’s mayor pro tem and the executive director and curator of art at the Citadelle Art Museum. “People from volunteer fire departments all around know where she is.”
Aud is the product of late Canadian resident Bobby Gene Cockrell Sr., who died in 2013 after a career as a welder and heavy equipment operator. She’s named for Cockrell’s wife, Audrey, who died in 2019. Beyond the grand romantic gesture of sculpting a huge dinosaur and naming her for his wife, Cockrell made sure Aud served an additional purpose. US 60 connects Canadian to larger cities like Pampa and Amarillo, and Cockrell used to say he wanted to let local children know they were almost home.
“Everybody loves Aud,” Cook says. “She is kind of the mascot of Canadian. We’ve leaned into that a little bit as the guardian of the community.”
Cockrell was self-taught. According to local history, he built Aud on-site in 1992 using rebar and wire mesh before pouring concrete over the structural frame. His family property right outside town is filled with similarly fantastical and handmade yard sculptures, including aliens and mythical creatures, and Cook identifies his work as the purest kind of outsider art.
“He was just somebody who wanted to create. It was a really beautiful statement on creating something just because it was meaningful to him,” she says. “You make it because it’s a reflection of your heart or your life, not because it’s supposed to meet someone’s standards that define fine art.”
Aud has become as much a part of the community’s landscape as the hilltop she stands on. For a time, she was painted black and gold to celebrate Canadian High School winning back-to-back state football championships in 2007 and 2008.
She’s back to green these days, and local volunteers periodically raise money to repaint the weathered giant. It’s no small project. “It’s huge,” Cook says. “It takes all these bucket trucks and ladders in order to get up on the top of it. It takes…I don’t know how many gallons of paint.”
At the Citadelle, one of Texas’ most surprising small-city art museums, Cook oversees a collection that includes works by Norman Rockwell and Elaine de Kooning. Yet the big green dinosaur built by an untrained sculptor may draw more attention from locals and travelers alike.
Cook thinks Cockrell would be proud that Aud remains part of the community. “That something he made has been absorbed into the natural fabric of living in Canadian,” she says. “I appreciate his capacity to answer a call inside of him. And at the end of the road, I think that’s really what art calls us to do.”
