Big Things, Small Town
Seven world's-largest objects in a walkable Illinois town of 2,300, all built by the same man over fifteen years. A four-minute detour off I-70 that deserves an afternoon.
7 stops · 1 day · Illinois · roughly 0 miles point to point
See the whole route and everything odd beside it
OddWay draws your route first, then plots every stop that falls inside the detour you're willing to make. No hunting through a list to work out what is actually on the way.
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Every one of the 7 places in the index. Plan a route and the map narrows to what's actually near it.
This is the only trip in the index you can do on foot.
Casey sits on I-70 halfway between St Louis and Indianapolis, and everything here is within a few blocks of East Main Street. The whole thing is free and outdoors and open all year.
Start with the wind chime
Not because it is the biggest — the rocking chair across the street is more imposing — but because it is the one that started it. Jim Bolin built it in 2011 out of recycled pipeline from his own company, to draw people off the interstate and into a tea shop he was not sure the town could support.
It worked, and he spent the next fifteen years doing it again.
The order barely matters
The listed order walks you from the wind chime and the rocking chair on East Main, over to the teeter totter, then the mailbox, and out to the smaller pieces. Any order works. The town is 2.6 square miles.
What matters more is not rushing. It is possible to photograph all seven in twenty minutes and come away thinking you have seen a novelty. The interesting thing is not any single object — it is that a town of 2,300 has thirty of them, built on purpose, by one person, because he wanted the shops to stay open.
Two things worth knowing
They are meant to be used. A Guinness record requires the object to perform its function, so the chime chimes, the chair rocks, and the mailbox takes post. Sit on things.
There are more than seven. OddWay lists the ones mapped in OpenStreetMap; there are over thirty around town, including a pitchfork at a restaurant and softball bats at the hall of fame. The town publishes a proper map, and it is worth picking one up.
And
Jim Bolin died in an accident in January 2026. The objects are all still there and the town still runs on them, but it is worth knowing whose work you are looking at.
The Route
World's Largest Windchime
Casey, Illinois
Casey’s first major world-record project was the giant wind chime, whose steel framework went up November 17, 2011 and whose chimes were installed on December 15 that year. The 54-foot structure still stands downtown and visitors can pull the rope to make the huge chimes sound.
Worlds Largest Rocking Chair
Casey, Illinois
Casey’s 56-foot, 46,200-pound rocking chair took two years to complete and officially claimed its record on October 20, 2015 after ten people demonstrated that it could actually rock. It is now fixed in place and remains a free outdoor centerpiece of Casey’s walkable collection of giant objects.
World's Largest Teeter-Totter
Casey, Illinois
Casey’s enormous teeter-totter is another piece of the Big Things Small Town project, built as a functioning oversized playground object and certified as a world-record attraction. It is visible outdoors for free beside Casey’s other giants, while opportunities to actually ride it are restricted to scheduled dates during the tourism season.
Worlds Largest Mailbox
Casey, Illinois
Casey’s enormous mailbox was built to satisfy Guinness requirements as a genuinely functional mailbox: visitors can climb the stairs inside and mail letters that raise its working red flag. Created during Casey’s mid-2010s Big Things expansion, it remains a free downtown attraction at 19 West Main Street.
Former World's Largest Knitting Needles
Casey, Illinois
Casey’s giant knitting needles were created by Jim Bolin and officially held the world-record title from 2013 to 2017. They are 13.75 feet long and are now presented as the former world’s largest, displayed with the town’s giant crochet hook at 2 East Main Street.
Casey Big Pencil
Casey, Illinois
Casey’s Big Pencil is a deliberately oversized teacher-style pencil created as part of the town’s Big Things Small Town project. The city explicitly says it is often mistaken for the world’s largest but is only a supersized replica, and visitors can see it free at 8 West Main Street along with Casey’s cluster of giant objects.
Casey Big Yardstick
Casey, Illinois
Casey’s Big Yardstick is a 36-foot-long yardstick with every inch enlarged to a foot, built as part of Jim Bolin’s town-wide Big Things project. It is not presented by Casey as a current Guinness record holder, but it remains a free outdoor stop at 3 East Main Street within walking distance of the town’s other oversized objects.