RUMFORD — Like Dixfield did years ago with its chain saw-carved, life-size wooden moose and yellow tracks, Mountain Valley High School art students painted powder-blue hoof prints atop a Congress Street sidewalk on Wednesday from Babe the Blue Ox to the statue’s Paul Bunyan companion.

The purpose of the tracks is to entice the thousands of tourists who stop annually at the Information Center on Route 2 where Bunyan stands, into hoofing it along the tracks through the downtown shopping district to find Babe.

The Blue Ox project’s goal is to hopefully revitalize businesses by getting tourists into the downtown area. It is the brainchild of Jim Rinaldo, a member of the town’s Economic Development Committee.

“The thing is, when you’ve got 6,000 people 200 yards from our retail businesses and nobody is trying to get them here, it’s a shame,” Rinaldo said Thursday.

That’s why he proposed the Blue Ox project, to get visitors at the center to cross Morse Bridge and enter the shopping district.

“We’ve got to get them to cross the bridge, and hopefully, this will do that,” he said. “We’ve got to keep pushing it, and hopefully we’ll see people following the tracks and our businesses will be getting some business.”

Last fall, Rinaldo convinced selectmen to OK spending $6,500 for the nearly 400-pound, powder blue fiberglass bovine that stands near the end of upper Congress Street beside the Rite-Aid Pharmacy sign.

And then, at the Board of Selectmen’s April 15 meeting, they approved Rinaldo’s proposed additions of directional signs by the statues telling people how to get from one to the other, and showing them by having schoolchildren paint hoof prints between the two.

On Wednesday, six students from Steve McGinty’s MVHS art class did just that, using a handmade wooden stencil platform Rinaldo built to do all four staggered hoof prints simultaneously. Students were: Rashida Dickinson, Heidi Billings, David Widger, Cody Zadakis, Aaron Delcourt and Melanie McDiffett.

“The trail is an attempt to increase the ‘Blue Ox’ effect,” Phil Blampied, Economic Development Committee Chairman, stated on Wednesday in an e-mail.

“It worked out pretty good,” Rinaldo said of the painting project that used paint donated by Sherwin-Williams of Rumford. Rinaldo said the same Sherwin-Williams paint color used on the fiberglass bovine, which was created out of state, was used for the hoof prints.

He said he also bought 1,000 postcards for the project and sold them to area businesses at cost so they could then sell them for profit.

On Thursday, Rinaldo said he was going to Jarato Screen Printing and Design on Congress Street to try and talk the owner into designing a T-shirt showing the town’s name on one side of the shirt along with Babe and with Bunyan on the back. A dozen shirts could then be made to determine the market potential for Blue Ox merchandise.

“I’m still trying to find a vendor for the key chains,” Rinaldo said.

The project isn’t without detractors, some of whom have publicly belittled selectmen for approving what they call Rumford’s “Moo-ndoggle.”

“The Ox is controversial in Rumford as many feel it is not going to succeed in bringing people downtown,” Blampied said.

However, Rinaldo told selectmen in April that he’s already seen visitors taking photographs of themselves and their children beside Bunyan’s companion.

He said he believes many people in town have equally good ideas about how to revitalize the downtown, but they’re afraid to voice them for fear of being ridiculed.

Rather than having a negative attitude toward moving Rumford into the future and hopefully growing businesses, Rinaldo said he wished more people would start thinking positively.

“There are a few people who have made jokes about Babe, but I think a lot of people will jump on board because they believe it’s an economic tool, so I hope to prove (the naysayers) wrong,” Rinaldo said.

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