A sight on Auburn Ravine Road might cause you to slam on the brakes if you’re not expecting it. About a half mile off Interstate 80, around a seemingly ordinary bend, appears a group of 40-foot-tall figures, mostly nude, in dramatic poses: a man ripping chains off his enormous frame, an Amazon woman bent back with a bow, another with a spear.

As astonishing as these statues are, the story behind them — involving a dentist, a controversial school bus route and a battle with the county — is even stranger.

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He did incur the wrath of at least one more person, though. In a 2004 oral history recorded with Fox and kept by the Placer County Historical Society, he was asked if anyone “commented on the fact that your giant Amazons are nude.” Fox recalled that after he erected the statues outside his office, some school district workers “got upset.” To keep the human form away from young eyes, they began rerouting the school buses.

“Someone wrote a letter to the editor saying whoever changed the route should be thrown out of the school system,” Fox said. “The next week, the school buses were back.”