Washington’s Best Roadside Oddities

Inspired by the most famous presidential scandal before Watergate, the 1922 Teapot Dome gas station shuffled locations around the small town southeast of Yakima before landing in a park just off Interstate 82. Now the bespouted little building dispenses tourist brochures, not gas or bribery allegations, and practically demands to be the backdrop to an “I’m a Little Teapot” pose.

Though more somber than a World’s Biggest Whatever, the 1929 replica of the famous megalithic monument fulfills one major requirement for a roadside attraction: total incongruity. Funded by businessman Sam Hill to memorialize World War I servicemen on the grassy hills of the Columbia River Gorge, it lacks the ancient
mystery of its English namesake—though here visitors can touch the (concrete, not stone) pillars.

Local pride in the egg-producing town of Winlock won’t be deterred by the fact that this is not actually an egg but a painted sculpture, or that it has been challenged in its “world’s biggest” title by an ovoid in Indiana. The annual Egg Days festival in June celebrates a place that was the second-biggest egg producer in America back in the 1920s, when the egg structure was commissioned.

Go ahead, climb on the art. The 12-foot-high sculpture officially called The Childhood Express was designed for play, with a slide that runs down the handle of the giant wagon. Parked in downtown Spokane, the structure shares Riverfront Park with the Numerica SkyRide gondolas, a less Brobdingnagian attraction.

The gaping maw of the great white on the main drag of Ocean Shores also serves as the entrance to a gift emporium hawking saltwater taffy and sealife stuffies. Constructed in 2009, it has come to define the beach town even though the animal is rarely spotted in the Pacific waters off the Washington coast.

No hokey gimmick, this 15-piece sculpture of galloping steeds is formally titled Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies and serves as an ideal pause on a cross-state I-90 trip. Designed by sculptor David Govedare, the artwork sprawls across a hillside above the Columbia River crossing at Vantage. Expect a short, steep walk to get close.

What to pray for on a trip on Highway 2 across the Cascades? No traffic, no avalanches, maybe no yahoos passing in no-passing zones. A minuscule church, erected in 1962, sits aside the highway and fits just four tiny pews, its cheery interior lit at night for any passerby in search of solace.

Admittedly no longer the “world’s largest” but a photo op nonetheless, the pan was used to cook a massive fritter from 200 pounds of clams at a city festival in 1941. Today the hanging kitchenware is a fiberglass recreation—the original got rusty and was riddled with half a dozen bullet holes by the time locals decided to attempt to preserve it.