My wife and I are on a mission to visit all the oversized local landmarks throughout Minnesota. This blog chronicles those visits and covers other related topics.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Map of Illinois Big Stuff


Photo by army.arch.

Illinois is home to the World's Largest Catsup Bottle, World's Largest Abraham Lincoln Statue, a number of Muffler Men, a few Big John statues, and Superman, among other things.

Perhaps the most famous Illinois Big Stuff is The Spindle. It's a bunch of cars on a spike. It was featured in the movie Wayne's World, as you can see in the clip below (it's at the end). There is also a giant Indian too. The Spindle is in danger of being lost. There are plans to take it down to make room for a Walgreens. It's still unknown what will happen to it because the cost to move it is high, especially if the cars are in tough shape.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hooray, a new map! I appreciate your work on these. They are so helpful. Have you seen the photo of Obama posing in front of the Superman statue? It's pretty great.

Unknown said...

I have now.

Unknown said...

I actually saw the World's Largest Catsup Bottle in February. I was visiting some friends who live near St. Louis and they brought me to it, but my wife couldn't make the trip so it isn't official by any means. It was at night and I could only get super blurry pictures of it anyway.

Anonymous said...

The spindle is definately gone. I was just at Cermak Plaza in the past couple weeks. The Walgreens is already going up.

Unknown said...

Thanks for that very unfortunate update. I guess they saved the top 2 cars and if they can raise the funds, a new Spindle could be erected with the original top 2 cars. That's what it says on wikipedia anyway.