POCAHONTAS – A teepee once again stands near the statue of Pocahontas that marks the eastern gateway to the city named after the Indian princess.

The steel structure will eventually have a concrete floor and a picnic table inside.

“It is, I think, truly a magnificient metal sculpture,” Pocahontas Mayor Dick Gruber said Wednesday afternoon.

Gruber acknowledged that the real Pocahontas, who lived in Virginia in the 1600s, would have never lived in a teepee. Teepees were used as homes by Native Americans in the western United States.

“Even though it’s not factually correct, it’s our icon,” Gruber said.

He said that decades ago there was a kind of teepee near the statue which was actually the facade of a building that housed a souvenir shop and a hamburger stand. He said the roof of that structure caved in and it had to be demolished.

The statue, erected in 1954, then stood alone along Iowa Highway 3 for decades.

“It became kind of a running joke in our community,” Gruber said. “Our princess doesn’t have a teepee. What are we going to do about it?”

This year, an effort to do something about the absence of a teepee unfolded.

In January, the Pocahontas County Foundation gave a $10,000 grant to the Pocahontas Hometown Pride Committee to help pay for the structure.

Research by Gruber and others uncovered an example of a metal teepee in Texas that became the model for the one in Pocahontas.

Dick Kollbaum, the owner of the Pocahontas Machine Shop, built the teepee.

Gruber said all the parts of the teepee were assembled while laying flat on the ground and were lifted up into a vertical position. The mayor said the process looked “like an umbrella being pulled back in except from the top.”

The teepee cost about $15,000.

Recently, Pocahontas school students planted native prairie grasses and coneflowers near the statue and teepee.

Gruber said the area is “kind of worth stopping in and taking a look at.”