ENTERPRISE – Parks Bronze of Enterprise is completing the 20,000th bronze casting it has produced since getting into the casting business 18 years ago.

The monumental piece is a 14-foot eagle created by artist Rip Caswell of Troutdale.

Parks Bronze owners Steve and Cindy Parks have come a long way from a business that began in their Joseph garage in 1986. Now they have 20 employees and are casting bronzes of all sizes at their location on Golf Course Road in Enterprise, where they moved in 1988.

Steve and Cindy Parks arrived in Wallowa County in 1982 from Sandy where Steve had worked for two years in a bronze foundry. He worked for Valley Bronze in Wallowa County until branching off on his own in 1986.

Caswell was elated that his casting was the 20,000th to come out of the foundry. He said the celebrated piece could easily have been some smaller, less striking work of art.

The eagle is part of a much larger project commissioned to Caswell by Neil Nedelisky of Portland. Caswell is producing 90 eagle heads, three life-size eagles and the 14-foot monument as part of the “Eagle Landing” subdivision going in at Sunnyside, near Clackamas Town Center south of Portland.

The three life-size eagles already have been cast at Parks Bronze.

Caswell is a nationally acclaimed taxidermist who got into the bronze-casting business in 1991. Pieces he has created have made it into the hands of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vice President Dick Cheney and into the Smithsonian Institute. Caswell has studios in Troutdale and Jackson Hole, Wyo.