World's Largest Rocking Chair

Fanning, Missouri

Erected on April Fool's Day 2008 outside the US 66 Outpost and General Store. It stands on rockers that are each 31.5 feet long and weigh a ton apiece. It's built of black steel pipe and was lifted into place by two cranes.

The Chair was conceived by Outpost owner Dan Sanazaro as a way to entice customers to his store, which he had opened only two months earlier. It was designed by a local acquaintance with no formal engineering training, and built by the owner of a local welding company. Dan remembered a big rocking chair he had seen as a kid on a family road trip, and had heard of a 34-foot-tall rocker in Franklin, Indiana -- Big John -- that he knew he had to beat.

At over 42 feet tall, The World's Largest Rocking Chair not only eclipses Big John, it stands nine feet taller than the former World's Largest Chair, now the World's Largest Office Chair, in Anniston, Alabama.

The Rocking Chair has a platform seat, but it's only available for sitting photo ops one day a year, "Picture on Rocker Day," the first Saturday in August. The Outpost hires a hoist truck to lift people into the chair.

In order to be certified by Guinness as the World's Largest Rocking Chair, the chair had to rock, which it did when first built. But the massive, multi-ton chair was so terrifying in motion, and Dan was so worried that tourists might flip it over and kill themselves, that he has now securely welded the chair to its base.