The oft-photographed Paul Bunyon fiberglass statue in downtown Atlanta, Illinois, received a touch-up last Saturday from the Illinois Route 66 Association’s Preservation Committee.
According to The New Herald News, about 10 volunteers repainted the 19-foot-tall statue, also called Tall Paul.
By 10:30 a.m. the scaffolding was in place and the preservation was underway. Everyone had a job to do, and because of the heat, the volunteers worked in rotation to keep cool and hydrated. The group worked diligently and finished painting Paul around 2:00 p.m. The Palms Grill provided lunch following the completion of the project.
The Paul Bunyon statue last was painted in 2012. A slide show of the volunteers working on the Tall Paul is at the newspaper’s website.
The fiberglass giant, also called a Muffler Man, stood in front of Bunyon’s hot-dog restaurant along Route 66 in Cicero, Illinois, from 1965 until 2003, when the restaurant closed. The restaurant spelled it “Bunyon” instead of the more traditional “Bunyan” because another restaurant used that name.
Route 66 preservationist John Weiss arranged a long-term loan with the statue’s owner and the city of Atlanta to keep Tall Paul on Route 66 for the foreseeable future.
According to Roadside America, International Fiberglass in Venice, California, made thousands of these roadside giants during the 1960s and ’70s in models including Indians, cowboys, Paul Bunyan and a few custom-made figures.
Several hundred survive, including on or near Route 66 in Wilmington, Illinois; Valley Park, Missouri; Flagstaff, Arizona; Livingston, Illinois; Springfield, Illinois; Calumet, Oklahoma; Gallup, New Mexico; Amarillo, Texas; Albuquerque; and Los Angeles.
(Screen-capture excerpted image from the Paul Bunyon statue repainting slide show)
Nice work by the volunteers!
It was hard to see the need for the repaint after just a few years, but thumbing through those photos, it’s easy to see the improvement.