World's Largest Cow: The Guernsey Cow [1945-1985] (Gone)
Exton, Pennsylvania
Built in late 1945, the World's Largest Cow was a full-color two-sized wedge-shaped sheet-steel billboard next to the old Lincoln Highway. Its head pointed across the road toward what was originally named the Exton Dairy Grille, but so many people referred to the place as simply "the cow" that the owner changed the restaurant's name to The Guernsey Cow.
The billboard was 35 feet tall and 48 feet long. It reigned unchallenged as the world's largest cow until 1974, when a slightly larger fiberglass cow (38 feet x 50 feet) was erected in North Dakota.
When the restaurant closed in 1985 the cow was slated to be disassembled. Plans to preserve it for posterity were thwarted, however, when brazen thieves climbed the billboard in the pre-dawn hours of July 24, 1985, and stole both cow heads. They were never seen again.
The old dairy restaurant has been heavily modified into a bank. The cow's former roadside spot across the highway is still occupied by a wedge-shaped billboard, but it's boring and normal.
