Headlining the festivities at the Arboretum will be the whimsical “Gophers in the Garden” exhibit of uniquely painted Goldy Gopher statues gracing the gardens and plant collections of the ...

One of them features our own mascot, Goldy the Gopher doing his after score pushups with an adjustable counter on the base so that you can keep track of the score of the next Gopher game ...

Goldy Gopher was born a chipmunk. That’s because when George Grooms originally drafted the design in the 1940s that would become the University’s mascot, he lived in Iowa, where there were no gophers.