Fallen Heroes: Spindle

Photo by paul goyette.

This Berwyn, Illinois landmark is no more. Spindle was a 50-foot spike with 8 cars impaled on it. It was built in 1989 by artist Dustin Shuler. It was located in the parking lot of Cermak Plaza in Berwyn. Spindle was featured in the movie Wayne's World in 1992. Plans were being made to remove the sculpture for more development at the shopping center, specifically a new Walgreens. The costs to move it would have been very high for the city, especially if the cars were in rough shape. In an effort to save Spindle, the sculpture was put up for auction on eBay. That auction ended with no bids.


Photo by BantikFamily.

On May 2, 2008, Spindle was disassembled. The top two cars were saved and, supposedly, if sufficient funds were raised, a new Spindle could be built using those two original cars.

More info.

Fallen Heroes: Stonefridge - A Fridgehenge

Santa Fe, NM


Photo from RoadsideAmerica.com

Stonefridge, if you haven't figured it out, is a recreation of Stonehenge using old refrigerators. It was built northwest of Santa Fe at a closed city dump, Paseo Las Vistas, by artist Adam Jonas Horowitz as a "monument to consumerism & the hubris of man". It was damaged this summer by a storm and was dismantled in May.

Here is an article from June 8, 2007 about the dismantling of Stonefridge.


Photo by Scott MacLeod

Fallen Heroes: Henry Leuhr's Bull

Picture from RoadsideAmerica.com

Henry Leuhr was a Hereford rancher from North Dakota, somewhere near Jamestown I believe. Henry decided to build a giant Hereford 30-feet tall and 50-feet long by laying strips of wood one on top of another and cementing them in place. As you can see, he also built stairs on the front of the bull. He also had more stairs on the inside and a hole in the top so you could sit on top of it.

After Henry died in 1996, the bull fell into disrepair. His son moved the bull two years later to Buchanan, ND where it sat outside of a small bar. There is stood deteriorating for years because it was too expensive and time consuming to repair. It was reported gone in January of 2007, according to Roadside America.

Fallen Heroes: World's Largest Replica Cheese

Image from RoadsideAmerica.com

The World's Largest Replica Cheese was built to honor and remember the World's Largest Real Cheese, a 17-ton Wisconsin made cheddar that was displayed at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. The cheddar was cut up and eaten in 1965.

The replica was built and placed in the Cheesemobile, a semi tractor with a refrigerated trailer that has (had) one plexi-glass side for viewing, that the original was in. It was then moved to Neillsville, WI. The replica was there for 40 years until it was sold in 2005 to a truck collector who was only interested in the tractor and not so much the giant polystyrene hunk of cheese. Go figure. Maintenance issues and expenses on the trailer were the reasons for the sale.

I don't know exactly what this replica cheese's fate was. Perhaps it still sits somewhere mostly unharmed, perhaps it was simply trashed, or perhaps it was used for the world's largest replica fondue. We may never find out for sure, but we do know that it no longer sits on display in Neillsville after 40 glorious years.

For more information on the World's Largest Replica Cheese, click here, here, and here.

Fallen Heroes: The Mighty Og

The Mighty Og is (or was) the upper half of a giant gorilla made out of wire and paper, at least that is my understanding. It is also my understanding that his name was originally O.G., as in "Oh gee, that's half of a big ugly gorilla." At some point his name became Og. He was originally located at Rawhide City, a tourist attraction near Mandan, ND.


Picture of Og at Rawhide City. RoadsideAmerica

Reportedly, Og was purchased by an implement dealer in Harvey, ND when Rawhide City went bankrupt, as to keep Og in the state of North Dakota. He had planned on putting him on the roof of his building but did not because he was told it would void his roof warranty. Eventually he was given a spot along Highway 52 outside of Harvey to put The Mighty Og. There he rested, with a pole in his head that had a hornet on top of it for the Harvey Hornets, until a storm destroyed Og. From what I can tell, I'm guessing that storm was in 2005 or maybe 2004.


More pictures located here

Fallen Heroes: The Last of the Happy Chefs

I was all set to do a Fallen Heroes post on the Happy Chef, but decided to try to confirm whether or not the Mankato Happy Chef was gone. I went to HappyChef.com and emailed them. They promptly responded Monday morning with this:

"The only statue left is the one in Mankato."

I don't normally post a picture of a Minnesota "target" until we visit it and photograph it, but I will make an exception this time. If you are unfamiliar with the Happy Chef, this is what the statues look like.


Picture from RoadsideAmerica

Happy Chef is a family-style restaurant chain founded in 1963 and based in Mankato. The chain grew to as many as 56 restaurants across 7 states. Many of them had their own Happy Chef statue. The statues stood 36 feet tall and had a button that would play a recorded message when pushed. Today there are only 16 restaurants left in Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota and only one statue remains.

A few Happy Chef statues managed to survive and find work elsewhere. A Happy Chef from Cedar Rapids, IA found work as a baseball umpire in Ryan, IA.


Image provided by Roadside Architecture

Another got a job as a chimney sweep in Kansas.


Picture thanks to Dorsia

There is a nice article from 2005 about Sal Frederick, the founder of Happy Chef, here.

Fallen Heroes: The Indians at the Thunderbird

Fallen Heroes is a feature I'm starting that I hope to be able to come back to from time to time and it hopefully will fill in the gaps nicely between big stuff visits. Fallen Heroes looks back to big stuff that once stood proudly but now are no longer on display.

We begin at the Thunderbird. The Thunderbird is a hotel/motel in Bloomington, MN. It was built in 1962 near the airport and very near Metropolitan Stadium, the original home of the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. Metropolitan Stadium is long gone and so is the Met, home of the North Stars which stood nearby. They have been replaced with the Mall of America and an IKEA. The Thunderbird is still there, but is now owned by Ramada.

The Thunderbird used to feature two twenty-some foot tall fiberglass indians. (Pictures below are courtesy of Mykl Roventine.)





These indians were removed in the spring of 2006 when the Thunderbird was being remodeled. Some reports indicated that these two were trashed; sometimes these things get moved to other locations. It would be a shame if they were trashed. Nobody wants their life to end in a dumpster in a motel parking lot. This picture on RoadsideAmerica.com indicates foul play. No oversized fiberglass indian would go anywhere without his moccasins.