From Philadelphia to road trips across the country, Tom Campbell’s Liberty Bell replica chase has turned a piece of mid-century Americana into a practical map of public history—complete with gaps, repairs and the occasional barrier to public viewing. “It was a casual thing that turned into an obsession,” Campbell, a graphic designer, said of how the hobby became something closer to a mission.
Campbell, now based in Fort Collins, Colorado, said he grew up in Philadelphia and visited the original Liberty Bell as a boy. He did not learn about the replicas until he moved to Denver in the late 1990s, when he said he was walking near the Colorado Capitol lawn and saw a full-size Liberty Bell sitting there. He then read about the 1950 bond drive on a bronze plaque and began what he described as a quest. As Campbell and his wife, Dawn Putney, traveled, he said they built “bell trips” into their itinerary, and he eventually created a website, tomlovesthelibertybell.com.
The replicas trace to a Treasury Department savings bond drive in 1950, when the government commissioned copies of the famously broken bell for each state and several territories. The AP reported that the replicas, except for serial numbers, were made as faithful lookalikes, including a faux crack and the Liberty Bell’s “Pass and Stow” trademark. The bells also matched the original’s weight at 2,080 pounds (944 kilograms), according to the AP story.
While the replicas were designed to resemble the original closely, metallurgical details differed. The AP said the National Park Service has described the original bell as being 70% copper and 25% tin, with small amounts of other metals such as lead, gold, arsenic, silver and zinc. In contrast, Anne Paccard, communications director and chief for “art of sound” projects at the Paccard Foundry in southeastern France, said in an email that the 1950 Treasury bells were made from a bronze alloy called “airain,” with 78% copper and 22% tin and “nothing else.” Paccard also characterized the original Liberty Bell, metallurgically speaking, as a “very poor quality” bell, according to the AP.
Campbell said he understands the replicas as artifacts meant to link civic spending with a familiar national symbol: “You could buy a savings bond, ring the Liberty Bell, have a party,” he said. The AP reported that Treasury delivered bells to the 48 states and the then-territories of Alaska, Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and also distributed one to the District of Columbia and the Treasury Department. Three additional bells, the AP said, went elsewhere, including Tokyo, a church in Paccard’s hometown, and the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri—where the AP reported that state received two.
The AP reported that many bells arrived without clear instructions or preservation funding, leaving local officials to decide how to manage them. Campbell said he was told by a local or state historian that one was an “unaccessioned artifact,” describing a situation where not every state “wanted them necessarily” or “knew what to do with them.” Some bells have been displayed outdoors for long periods, and the AP said exposure to weather helped wear down painted-on cracks and led to displays without key components needed to ring, such as clappers and/or yokes, or in steel frames that prevent ringing. “At that point, it really transitions to more of a monument than a functional bell,” Campbell said. “And, to me, that’s kind of sad.”
Even so, the AP said repairs are underway for some replicas as the country marks 250 years of liberty. In Kansas, the AP reported the bell spent years disassembled in a Capitol parking garage until state Sen. Elaine Bowers got involved. In October, after reassembly on a heated concrete pad and a custom-made wooden yoke (still without a clapper), the bell was moved to an outdoor location near the Docking State Office Building. “It just belongs here,” Bowers said as she stood beside bell No. 21, calling it both “a fascinating piece of artwork” and “history that we all should be proud of.”
Elsewhere, the AP said the Alabama and Idaho bells were shipped to a restoration facility, with officials expecting them to return in time for the Fourth of July. Campbell told the AP he does not try to shame states into improving access, but said his website might nudge them “a bit.” He has also said the project helped inspire a younger generation of bell hunters, including Zoe Murphy, a 14-year-old high school freshman from Morris County, New Jersey.
Murphy told the AP that she began learning about state capitals and flags at age 4, and at 5 she saw her first Liberty Bell replica in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She said she now has her own website, zlovesamerica.com, and that she has visited 39 of the replicas, from Alabama to Wyoming and even to Alaska. Murphy said traveling has given her a deeper appreciation for America’s “collective mix of people and our culture.”
Campbell said some replicas remain difficult to see during this anniversary year. The AP reported that, as far as Campbell can tell, three bells are fully unavailable to the public, including a Pennsylvania replica. The AP said the Pennsylvania Treasury bell had been the centerpiece of a museum at the former Zion’s Reformed Church of Allentown, where the original bell was briefly hidden during the Revolutionary War to keep British forces from melting it down for munitions. After the church building changed hands in 2023, the AP reported the bell is no longer accessible while the church is renovated, with local officials placing a lighter, taller replica outside the church for the anniversary. When the AP asked to see the Pennsylvania bell, spokeswoman Mary Huntley said: “Our Liberty Bell is in a secure storage facility.”
The AP reported that North Carolina’s bell was also moved temporarily. Last June, it was hoisted from its spot across from the Legislative Building in Raleigh amid renovations of the state history museum, and the AP said access was denied when it asked to see the bell, with Huntley’s spokeswoman statement echoed for that denial. Campbell told the AP he believes the only truly lost replica is the one sent to Washington, D.C., which he said went missing from storage in the early 1980s. “That’s 2,080 pounds of bronze,” Campbell said, adding that he suspects it has been melted down and has scrap value.
While Campbell’s count for himself has reached 40 after a recent visit to Arizona’s newly restored bell, the AP reported that he still sees the replicas as part of a wider story about the nation the bells represent. He said the symbol’s meaning reflects its history, describing the cracked bell as “the symbol of the United States” and saying that it is “really the perfect symbol of an imperfect union.”