Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

World’s Largest Cow

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Friday, 27th July 2007

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars

It would seem that we have finally reached the absolute pinnacle of our continuing quest to discover the latest and greatest “World’s blankest blank“, as seen by satellite!

Yes you lucky people, prepare yourselves for… The World’s Largest Cow!

This is actually Salem Sue of New Salem, North Dakota, who is 38 feet high, 50 feet long, and was constructed from six tons of reinforced fiberglass back in ‘74 for the primary purpose of, um, bigging up the local dairy farmers I guess.

Over in the UK we have our own famous Concrete Cows sculpture, which were created four years after Salem Sue by Canadian-born artist Liz Leyh, but are only about half life size.

More about Salem Sue at Roadside America and more about Concrete Cows at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Simon Cope and Jason Smith.

6 Responses to 'World’s Largest Cow'

  1. David S says:

    I’m from North Dakota, and I’ve been to Salem Sue. Seeing her up close is worth pulling off the interstate for, but what’s even better is the fact that she stands atop one of the highest ‘peaks’ of a very flat central North Dakota, giving you an opportunity to see for miles and miles.

    Its a brilliant place to have a picnic.

  2. Brian says:

    Is the link bad for the concrete cows? The link leads to a place in the US that you need to zoom REALLY far to see anything. (The URL looks like it might be missing the lat/lon)

  3. CookieMonster says:

    Im sure the lads will get round to fixing the link but in the mean time:

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  4. Alex says:

    Thanks guys, now fixed :)

  5. And for the biggest cow we need a big bull: for example, Placemark: this one / Google Earth.

    One of the most typical roadside advertising in Spain, you can find more informaton about them in Wikipedia and find each of them in Google Earth/Maps thanks to the Google Earth Comunity. Ground level photos available at Flickr’s Toroosborne

Leave a Reply

This form supports simple HTML, but URLs will be automatically linked.

Link to specific places with a Google Maps link, or with a latitude and longitude written like this: lat/lng:55.949400,-3.200000

If you've found something that you think should be posted in its own entry then use the suggestion form!