A friend and I were walking through old town Clovis with our sketchbooks and came upon this statue of Ken Curtis, made by local artist Samantha Cowen. I’ve walked by it several times, but never stopped to read the little plaque about who he was. Turns out, Ken Curtis was the actor who played Marshall Dillon’s scraggly deputy “Festus” on the hit television series, Gunsmoke. Although he was originally from Colorado, his last years were spent right here in Clovis, California. Ken moved to Clovis in 1980 and lived here until his death in 1991.