Wherever you go in this country, there’s likely to be something big you can visit along the way. And by big we mean something that is – or claims to be – “the world’s largest ...” Some turn out to be civic efforts to get some attention, but many are testaments to a town’s better times gone by. Feel we've missed something big on this list?
World’s Largest Bottle of Ketchup – Collinsville, Ill.
This 70-foot tall, bottle-shaped water tower sits on 100-foot-tall steel legs and was built in 1949 to advertise the local bottling plant making Brooks Catsup. In the early 1990s, long after the community’s ketchup-making was capped, a local preservation group saved the bottle from demolition and now holds a World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Festival each July."
Big Things: World's Largest Frying Pan
Rose Hill, N.C., boasts a giant pan 15 feet in diameter, but this 10-by-20-foot cast-iron beauty is older and bigger. Forged in the early 1940s, the pan was first used to fry the world’s largest clam fritter. To help out, local girls greased the pan by skating around inside it on large slabs of butter.
Big Things: World's Largest Penny
In 1953, local citizens and perfect strangers from around the country gave their two cents, and more, when Dr. Kate Newcomb asked for help getting a hospital built in this northern Wisconsin town. In response, local schoolchildren began a campaign to collect 1 million pennies. Their success (1.7 million pennies raised) and Newcomb’s dedication (she was known for making house calls on snowshoes if needed) are commemorated with a 17,000-pound concrete 1953 penny 10 feet in diameter and 18 inches thick.
Big Things: Giant Duck
Built in 1931 by one of the many duck farmers who used to operate on Long Island, this 20-foot-tall, 30-foot-long duck was for many years a shop that sold, you guessed it, eggs and Long Island duck. Most duck farms are gone, but the big plucky duck is still here and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Big Things: World's Largest Spinach Can
Your kids may not care for it, but Alma loves spinach. The self-proclaimed “Spinach Capital of the World” has a spinach canning plant, a bronze statue of Popeye, an annual Spinach Festival and, overlooking the town, a giant water tower painted to look like a can of Popeye brand spinach.
Big Things: Souvenir Plate
Created by Erika Nelson, an artist who travels the country displaying her tiny versions of some of the world’s largest things, this souvenir travel plate is 14 feet in diameter and made from two decommissioned fiberglass satellite dishes, nestled one inside the other. “One of the local scenes depicted is the burning of the fields that takes place each fall,” Nelson says. “It’s very dramatic and scary for a first-time viewer.”
Big Things: World's Largest Egg
Mentone, now home to two of Indiana’s egg-producing companies, has been known as the “Egg Basket of the Midwest” since the turn of the 19th century, when trains would stop in town to pick up eggs bound for Chicago and East Coast markets. To honor its egg-citing history, it built the world’s largest egg – 10 feet tall and 3,000 pounds of concrete and steel – to display in the center of town.
Big Things: Largest Eight Ball
For years Tipton, Mo., was headquarters for a home-grown company that became one of the country’s largest manufacturers of pool tables. The billiards business left town in the 1980s, but this water tower decorated as the world’s largest eight ball remains.
Big Things: World's Largest Holstein Cow
Salem Sue, the world’s largest Holstein cow statue, was built to honor the area’s dairymen and celebrate the history of this dairy-dependent community. Sue stands 38 feet tall and 50 feet long, and even though it’s hollow and made of fiberglass, it weighs in at 12,000 pounds.
Big Things: World's Largest Loon
Looking for loons? Minnesota’s state bird is the loon, and at least two towns claim to be the home of the state’s largest loons. The town of Virginia has a 20-foot fiberglass floating loon decoy. Vergas, the self-proclaimed “Home of the Loon” has had a 20 foot-tall sculpture of a loon since the 1960s.
Big Things: Albert the Bull
Albert the Bull holds the title as the world’s largest bull statue and is Audubon’s tribute to its cattle-industry heritage. The 30-foot-tall, 45-ton concrete statue of a Hereford has a horn span of 15 feet and is lighted at night, welcoming travelers passing by. “There’s even a recording out there that will tell you the whole story of how Albert got made,” says a caretaker at the nearby Albert the Bull Campground.
Big Things: Lucy the Elephant
This six-story, 90-ton elephant named Lucy was built in 1881 as an attraction to lure potential real-estate investors to a patch of undeveloped property on the southern New Jersey seashore. Since then, Lucy has served as everything from a summer home to a tavern. The wooden elephant with metal skin survived hurricanes, a fire and years of abandonment before being rescued and relocated in 1970. It was eventually refurbished and reopened as a tourist attraction.
Big Things: Big Brutus
The world’s largest electric coal shovel stands 16 stories high (160 feet) and weighs 11 million pounds. From 1963 until 1974, this one-of-a kind, black and orange behemoth worked seven days a week, 24 hours a day moving dirt and rocks aside so coal could be mined. When it came time to retire Big Brutus, operators backed it out of the coal pits, parked it and removed its engines. Today, the giant shovel is the centerpiece of a museum dedicated to miners and mining history.
Big Things: The Big Lemon
In the early 1900s, Lemon Grove was known for its lemon and orange groves, but today the town is a suburb of San Diego with barely an orchard left. “Still,” says “World’s Largest” co-producer Amy C. Elliot, “this big lemon statue is still there. It’s been repainted over the years and still remains a symbol of the town, even though that’s not what they’re about anymore.”
