Pickaxe Art Pieces Are the Most Awesome Thing You’ll See Off I-10

Picks up!

Those words aren't just the Miner Nation's rallying cry, it also describes what recently happened on I-10 around The University of Texas at El Paso.

The Texas Department of Transportation erected two massive pickaxe art pieces around the university, and they look so freaking awesome!

The “Buried Pick” monuments, so called because they're made to look like a giant Paydirt Pete sunk them into the ground, are about 40 feet tall, 25 feet long and 12 feet wide. The letters U-T-E-P are set on both sides of the axe handle and backlit with an LED light source.

One of the twin picks has been installed alongside the university S-3 parking lot just south of the roundabout and across from Kelly Hall, and the other along I-10 East across from the S-4 parking lot that sits across from the Sun Bowl parking garage.

The locations were chosen to mark UTEP's most traveled entrance, according to university officials.

They, as well as the monuments honoring Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso that went up last year around the Spaghetti Bowl area, are part of TxDOT's I-10 aesthetics project.