Peter Hurd’s fresco depicts 16 Lubbock pioneers from all walks of life. It is over 12 feet high and 108 feet long, encircling Holden Hall’s rotunda. He began painting the fresco in February 1953 when the building housed the university’s museum. It was Hurd’s seventh mural and the largest painting project he undertook during his career. Hurd was an apprentice to painter N.C. Wyeth and was well-known for his landscapes and portraits, including a portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.