Lyle Lynch and "Clonia," his Barbed Wire Ball.

World's 2nd Largest Ball of Barbed Wire

Grand Prairie, Texas

For years this was the world's #1 largest barbed wire ball. It was rolled in Mesa, Arizona, beginning around 1970, by Lyle Lynch, a retired National Park Service tour guide. Lynch named it "Clonia" and kept it in his front yard. Varying accounts give the ball a maximum height of eight feet and a weight of three tons. It reportedly contains 16 miles of barbed wire wrapped around a silver dollar.

Barbed Wire Ball crashing through wall in Jackson Hole, WY Ripley's (2007).

In 1997 the ball was placed on display at the Ripley's Believe It or Not! in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which had a Western theme. According to Kevin Ricks, co-owner of the Jackson Hole Ripley's, Lyle Lynch was 77 years old when he began rolling the ball and "wanted to be known for something."

Unfortunately for Lynch, his fame came too late: by 1997 he was dead and his ball had already been surpassed by another, rolled by J.C. Payne, who claimed to have been a friend of Lynch but who nevertheless set out to obliterate his record. Payne said that the ball he had rolled was 11.5 feet high, weighed 12 tons, and contained 70 miles of barbed wire. Guinness World Records, however, refused to certify it, and Ripley's declined to buy it, so it sits on private property, out of view.

Barbed Wire Ball displayed outdoors in Grand Prairie, Texas.

Even if you accept Payne's unverified figures, Lynch's barbed wire ball holds the record as the largest ever to be publicly exhibited. In 2017 the rusty wonder was taken out of storage and put on display outside the Ripley's in Grand Prairie, Texas.

Despite Lyle Lynch's desire for recognition, the sign accompanying his barbed wire ball in Grand Prairie does not mention his name.