In the most unsuspecting of places, a field in rural Virginia, 43 American presidents stand in silence. Washingtonian travel writer Kelly Paras set out to find just what this graveyard of former leaders is doing here.

The United States of America has had 44 men serve as president. While some have monuments to their legacy in our nation’s capital or their home cities, 43 are memorialized in pastoral Croaker, Virginia. Here, in a farmer’s field next to a woodchip production facility, 20-foot-high busts of the nation’s honored, but imperfect, leaders sit quietly waiting.

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon when I found myself face-to-face, well face-to-shoulder to be exact, with Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington and co. To peer into the dinner-plate-sized eyes of these revered men, I had to crane my neck skywards. But the details were uncanny. Crafted of concrete and steel by Houston sculptor David Adickes, each president is easily identifiable in a frozen stare.