35-Foot-High Rocking Chair

Gulfport, Mississippi

According to the sons of Roy E. Dedeaux, patriarch of Dedeaux Clan Furniture, their father had always dreamed of building a monumentally huge rocking chair. That dream came true only after his death, but he would have been proud; the chair was a whopper: a 35-foot-tall "Magnolia Rocker" built of Southern Yellow Pine. When it was completed in January 1995, a small granite marker was installed between its legs, christening it the World's Largest, which it was, and which it remained for over a decade.

Giant Dedeaux Clan Rocker.

The chair has since been surpassed in scale by a bigger rocker in Missouri, and then by the current behemoth champ in Illinois, but the Dedeaux chair is no less impressive for being third largest. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed pretty much everything in its path, only succeeded in stripping the chair of its paint and knocking it off its rockers. The furniture company quickly set it back upright, and two years later a motel chain repainted the chair and gave the Dedeaux family a check for $20,000 to maintain it for future generations.