11 Giant Roadside Landmarks in the USA You Have to See

I will always take the exit for something enormous. If a roadside giant looms over the highway, I am pulling the car over to gawk, no matter what the schedule says.

A cow the size of a house. A cowboy taller than a hotel. A dinosaur you could park a bus inside.

That is the whole appeal of the great American giant, built by some stubborn dreamer to make you hit the brakes. These things were never subtle, and that is the point. They turn a dull stretch of interstate into a reason to grin.

Below, I have rounded up eleven of the best giants in the country, from a smoking neon cowboy to a peach you can spot from the interstate. Bring quarters for the gift shop and a camera you are not afraid to use.

1. Jolly Green Giant Statue, Minnesota

He is green, he is grinning, and he is fifty five feet of pure roadside cheer. The Jolly Green Giant looms over Blue Earth in his leafy tunic, one hand on his hip, looking exactly like the fellow who has been selling canned peas since your grandparents were kids.

A local radio host named Paul Hedberg dreamed him up in the late 1970s to lure Interstate 90 traffic back into town. The fiberglass giant went up in 1979, weighs four tons, and wears a size 78 shoe. His feet alone run six feet long.

Stand beside one of those boots for the classic photo, then pop into the little museum at his feet. Around ten thousand travelers a year make the stop, and every one of them leaves grinning back.

Where: Green Giant Statue Park, 1126 Green Giant Ln, Blue Earth, MN 56013, just off I-90 at exit 119.

2. World’s Largest Catsup Bottle, Illinois

Rising one hundred seventy feet over Collinsville is a bright red bottle of ketchup you could spot from space. Well, a water tower dressed as one. The Brooks Catsup Bottle has been the town’s proudest landmark since 1949, and yes, they spell it “catsup.”

The W.E. Caldwell Company built it for the Brooks catsup plant next door, a seventy-foot bottle perched on a hundred-foot steel tower. It holds a hundred thousand gallons of water, never a drop of catsup, and cost all of twenty three thousand dollars.

A group of locals saved it from the scrapyard and restored it in 1995, and it landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. Come in summer for the town’s Catsup Bottle Festival.

Where: 800 S Morrison Ave, Collinsville, IL 62234, on Route 159 just south of downtown.

3. Golden Driller, Oklahoma

Seventy six feet of golden oilman stands guard outside the Tulsa fairgrounds, one massive hand resting on a real oil derrick, hard hat tilted back like he just clocked off a shift. The Golden Driller is one of the tallest statues in the entire country.

He first appeared at the 1953 International Petroleum Exposition, and the permanent version went up in 1966. Built to shrug off two hundred mile per hour winds, he weighs more than twenty tons and was modeled on a real Oklahoma oilfield worker.

Oklahoma made him an official state monument in 1979, a fitting honor for the city that once called itself the Oil Capital of the World. Stand at his boots and you will feel about ankle high.

Where: Tulsa Expo Square, 4145 E 21st St, Tulsa, OK 74114, outside the Tulsa Expo Center.

4. Cabazon Dinosaurs, California

Roll down Interstate 10 west of Palm Springs and a brontosaurus the length of half a football field looms out of the desert. This is Dinny, one hundred fifty feet from nose to tail, with a Tyrannosaurus rex towering sixty five feet nearby.

Claude Bell, a sculptor from Knott’s Berry Farm, started building Dinny in 1964 to pull travelers into his roadside diner. It took him eleven years and about fifty tons of concrete, much of it scavenged rebar from the freeway going up next door.

You can climb inside Dinny’s belly, where a gift shop hides, and film buffs may recognize the pair from a certain 1980s road-trip comedy. Kids lose their minds here, and honestly, so do most adults.

Where: 50770 Seminole Dr, Cabazon, CA 92230, off I-10 at the Main Street exit.

5. The Peachoid, South Carolina

You cannot miss it, and that is entirely the point. The Peachoid is a hundred thirty five foot water tower painted to look like a giant, ripe peach, cleft and all, glowing orange and pink beside Interstate 85. From the highway it looks good enough to eat.

Gaffney built it in 1981 to hold a million gallons of water and, more importantly, to remind Georgia who really grows the peaches. An artist named Peter Freudenberg hand-painted the steel so it would read as fruit, not metal, at seventy miles an hour.

South Carolina actually out-grows the self-proclaimed Peach State most years, so the giant fruit is a friendly bit of trash talk aimed south. Fans of a certain political TV drama may recognize it, too.

Where: 1 Peachoid Rd, Gaffney, SC 29341, off I-85 between exits 90 and 92.

6. Salem Sue, North Dakota

Cresting a hill above New Salem is a Holstein cow the size of a small building, thirty eight feet tall and fifty feet long, gazing calmly out over the prairie. Local dairy farmers commissioned her in 1974 as a tribute to the industry that built the county.

Artist Dave Oswald sculpted her from fiberglass, and the New Salem Lions Club raised roughly forty thousand dollars to make it happen. They still look after her today, giving her a fresh coat of black and white when the weather wears her down.

She sits high enough that you can spot her from Interstate 94 long before you reach the exit. Drive up the access road for the close view and the big grassy overlook.

Where: School Rd, New Salem, ND 58563, on a hilltop just off I-94 at exit 127.

7. World’s Largest Ball of Paint, Indiana

It began on New Year’s Day in 1977 when Mike Carmichael let his three-year-old son slap a coat of blue paint on an ordinary baseball. Then Mike kept going. Every single day, a new layer.

Nearly fifty years later that baseball wears more than twenty five thousand coats of paint, weighs about two and a half tons, and needs its own reinforced barn to hang from. The circumference is over fourteen feet, and it grows a little heavier by the afternoon.

The best part is you can join in. Call ahead, show up, and Mike hands you a brush and lets you add the newest layer yourself. He photographs you doing it and writes your name in the guest book.

Where: 10696 N 200 W, Alexandria, IN 46001, by appointment through the Carmichael family.

8. Dignity of Earth and Sky, South Dakota

Of every giant on this list, this is the one that stops conversation. A fifty-foot stainless steel Indigenous woman stands on a bluff above the Missouri River, arms open, receiving a star quilt that stretches wide behind her.

South Dakota artist Dale Lamphere unveiled her in 2016 to honor the Lakota and Dakota peoples native to the state. The quilt holds one hundred twenty eight steel diamonds hinged to catch the wind, so the whole piece shimmers and ripples as the breeze moves through it.

She glows at sunset and lights up softly after dark. Pull off Interstate 90 at the Chamberlain rest area, walk out to her, and give yourself a quiet minute. It earns one.

Where: Dignity Dr, Chamberlain, SD 57325, at the I-90 rest area between exits 263 and 265.

9. Vegas Vic, Nevada

Long before the megaresorts, one neon cowboy was the face of Las Vegas. Vegas Vic went up over the old Pioneer Club on Fremont Street in 1951, a forty-foot sign in a ten-gallon hat, thumb hooked toward downtown.

In his heyday he was fully animated. His arm waved, his eye winked, a cigarette bobbed in his mouth, and a recorded voice boomed “Howdy Partner” at everyone who walked by. He is the classic postcard image of vintage Vegas, and he still watches over the street today.

Come after dark, when the neon does what neon was born to do. He glows under the Fremont Street canopy like a friendly ghost of the city’s earliest days.

Where: 25 E Fremont St, Las Vegas, NV 89101, above the shops in the Fremont Street Experience.

10. World’s Largest Six-Pack, Wisconsin

Six giant beer cans stand in a neat row beside the Mississippi River in La Crosse, each one fifty four feet tall and painted like a fresh can of Old Style Lager. Together they are, officially, the World’s Largest Six-Pack.

They are not really cans, of course. The old G. Heileman Brewery built the six storage tanks in 1969 and painted them a year later as a giant advertisement. Filled with actual beer, the sixer would pour something like seven million cans’ worth.

The brewery still runs today as City Brewing, and in 2023 the tanks were re-wrapped in the classic Old Style design, right where the whole gag started. It is the most Wisconsin landmark imaginable.

Did you know? At a can a day, the brewery reckons it would take one person more than three thousand years to drink the whole six-pack dry.

Where: City Brewery, 925 S 3rd St, La Crosse, WI 54601, along the Mississippi riverfront.

11. Sam Houston Statue, Texas

Rising sixty seven feet beside Interstate 45 in Huntsville is a blazing white statue of Sam Houston, the general and first president of the Republic of Texas. Locals call it “A Tribute to Courage,” and it is the tallest statue of an American hero anywhere in the world.

Artist David Adickes built it in 1994 out of five layers of concrete over a steel frame, after a trip to Mount Rushmore left him itching to go big. On a clear day you can spot Houston’s white silhouette from six miles down the highway.

There is a visitor center and gift shop at the base, and the scale only truly lands when you stand at his boots and look up. Everything really is bigger in Texas, and here is the proof.

Where: 7600 TX-75, Huntsville, TX 77340, off I-45 at the Huntsville visitor center.

Start Plotting Your Giant-Sized Road Trip

The beautiful thing about these giants is that they were built for exactly this: to reward the curious driver who takes the exit. Most cost nothing to visit, all of them make a great photo, and every single one has a story behind it worth hearing.

So pick a couple that fall along your next drive, top off the tank, and go say hello to something enormous. The interstate is full of surprises, and the best ones are impossible to miss.

Featured image: John Spencer via Cabazon Dinosaurs