| Artist: | Henry Lion |
| City: | Los Angeles |
| Coordinates: | 34.0613°N -118.3672°W |
| Mapframe: | yes |
| Mapframe-Zoom: | 13 |
The Pioneer is a bronze sculpture of a 49er of the California Gold Rush. The statue was created in 1925 by Henry Lion and has long been a landmark of the Carthay Circle, Los Angeles neighborhood in California, United States, except for a brief period in 2008 when it was stolen. It was recovered at a scrap metal yard by the LAPD art-theft division and was reinstalled in January 2009.[1] Created as an homage to the father of the founder of the Carthay Circle district, the statue is sometimes called Dan the Miner after its subject, Daniel O'Connell McCarthy.[2] Originally part of a fountain opposite Carthay Circle Theatre, it was moved to the pocket park at McCarthy Vista and San Vicente Boulevard in 1969. The Pioneer was one of three California-historic-nostalgia monuments in the original layout of Carthay Circle, along with a boulder honoring Jedediah Smith and a sundial made of bricks of Mission San Juan Capistrano.[3]
Lion told Betty Hoag in 1964 for the Archives of American Art oral history project, "[''The Pioneer''] was a competition, national competition, which I happened to win in 1924. I was just out of Otis; I was 25 years old. It was an anonymous competition and there was a thousand dollar prize in addition to the commission to do it. They gave me the commission and this seven-foot bronze was cast in New York by the Rollin Bronze Works."[4]