Salem Sue, New Salem, North Dakota.
Cowlossus of Roads
On the roads of America, cows rule. Of all the animals that graze at the edges of America's collective driving unconscious, our rural milk-and-meat machines are the most frequently favored with tributes in fiberglass and concrete.
Chatty Belle, Neillsville, Wisconsin.
Cows are ennobled in fine art and folk art. If a cow is famous, it is honored with a worthy grave or a historical marker. If a cow produces a Goliath-size hairball, the orb is preserved as an important relic.
The nation's esteem, however, is most grandly displayed in the big bovine statues that grace our towns and pastures. Their towering presence reminds us: cows are important! Without them, Americans would have no hamburgers, no steak. Our cereal would be dry, our coffee black.
The first of America's mighty cow tributes was a giant Guernsey in Pennsylvania, the world's biggest at the time. It was a 2-D billboard, soon joined by a multi-state herd of sculptural 3-D cows that surpassed it in size. These titans are the ones that we see today, reaching heights that mock gravity's limitations. They stand because their innards are filled with steel bracing and air, not milk.
For creatures that could easily crush us if they could move, big cow statues are placidly unthreatening. Many are nearly identical, cast from standard molds designed by fiberglass-folk such as F.A.S.T. Inc. (based in milk-rich Wisconsin, and offering a dozen cow variants), yet each is uniquely important to its host community, tourist-farm, or steakhouse. The bond is so strong that some places, unable to manage an entire giant cow (or the cost), opt for just a giant cow head.
F.A.S.T., Sparta, WI. Herd prepped for departure, 1996.
Americans who see a big bovine along the highway will likely call it a cow, not caring that it may in fact be a bull, steer, ox, or longhorn. Our Cowlossus of Roads map features prime examples of them all, but its pushpins differentiate the cows-that-are from the cows-that-aren't. We've included large and notable buffalo as well; they were, after all, America's original cattle.
(The fabled Babe the Blue Ox is mapped separately in our Paul Bunyan roundup).
The nation's most majestic cows cluster in the dairy heartland, but our big, beefy bulls and steers range from coast to coast. The South favors longhorns; early farm regions have oxen; the prairie states, bison. As for cows, a quick look at our map reveals that once you're west of the 100th meridian, you're as likely to encounter a huge cattle skull as you are a behemoth bossy.
For our Cowlossus of Roads map, we've skipped most indoor and small cows. A life-size cow perched high and inaccessible on a roof or sign might disqualify it as worthy of note. Even big cow statues are sometimes mobile, and no doubt we've missed strays -- let us know if you've spot and photograph a meat or dairy giant worthy of inclusion.
We live in a diverse America where even roadhouse menus sometimes include soy burgers and almond milk. But judging from what stands along our nation's highways, we as a people will always be pro-cow.