World's Largest Thermometer

Baker, California

Will Herron, a businessman, dreamed of a huge thermometer for 25 years before he made it a reality in California's high desert. The World's Largest Thermometer is 134-ft.-tall, symbolic of the record high temperature in the US, in Death Valley -- 134 degrees Fahrenheit in 1913.

It juts up above Bob's Big Boy coffee shop in Baker, a small town near Nevada, "Gateway to Death Valley."

Herron had the thermometer constructed by Electric Sign Co. of Las Vegas (manufacturers of many neon and bulb monstrosities of the Vegas strip). They used 33 tons of steel, and almost 5,000 lamps to render the three-sided digital display. After strong winds broke the thermometer, smashing a gift shop under construction, it was rebuilt, and eventually filled with concrete so that it would survive anything short of a direct thermonuclear attack (okay, that's our claim -- not Baker's).

Near the thermometer, as testament to the local climate, a frying pan with eggs appears to be a permanent monument.

On one trip, we tried to coax the lovely ladies of Exotic World, an hour west, out to dance at the base of the thermometer. It was only 121 degrees F that day, but the plan fell apart, and we continued on alone.

Baker's Thermometer has no real competition as far as other towering thermal measurement devices are concerned. International Falls, Minnesota passively perpetuated an old claim that their 22-ft. tall thermometer was the World's Largest (ha!), but even the notion that they are still the "Coldest Spot in 48 States" was challenged by a sturdy concrete penguin statue in Cut Bank, Montana -- "Coldest Spot in the Nation." In 2002, International Falls gave up and took apart their thermometer after it stopped working.