Watch this patriotic mural at the Prado Dam go from old to new again

After months of work, the restoration of the 80,000-square-foot Prado Dam Bicentennial Freedom Mural near Corona is complete.

The mural, originally painted in 1976, commemorated 200 years of freedom for the U.S., but over the decades has faded and been vandalized.

In 1976, Perry Schaefer and his Corona high school classmate Ron Kammeyer designed the mural to look like a bumper sticker, winning a senior class project. Thirty Corona high school students camped out over two weekends with donated paint from local hardware stores and finished the mural in May 1976.

After many years, the mural began to fade, and issues with graffiti and lead paint concerns arose. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the dam, announced plans to remove the fading painting, leading mural co-designer Kammeyer and the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles to sue in May 2015 to stop the plans. The lawsuit was dismissed in April 2022.

After losing the lawsuit, the removal of the lead-painted mural was inevitable, but talks of recreating the mural with non-lead paint began.

More than $100,000 in donations came in to support the recreation of the 1976 Bicentennial Freedom Mural, which is visible off the 91 Freeway, and the project was finished in May.

Repainting of patriotic mural on Corona-area Prado Dam begins

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