Tall Paul Bunyan Statue

Tall Paul's story begins not in Atlanta but in Cicero, Illinois, the close-in Chicago suburb that was home to dozens of Route 66 and pre-interstate businesses through the mid-20th century. The statue was acquired in the 1960s by Bunyon's, a small hot dog stand on Ogden Avenue (US Route 34, not Route 66 proper) operated by a Chicago-area family. The figure was originally one of the standard International Fiberglass 'Paul Bunyan' lumberjack muffler men — produced with an axe in his right hand — and the Bunyon's owners modified the figure to fit their business by replacing the axe with a custom-made oversized fiberglass hot dog.

The Cicero Bunyon's stand operated for several decades with the modified Paul standing watch over the parking lot as a roadside advertisement and unofficial neighborhood landmark. Local Cicero residents who grew up in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s remember Paul as a fixture of childhood drives down Ogden Avenue, and the figure was an accepted part of the Chicago-area roadside-statue inventory long before he became a Route 66 celebrity.

By the late 1990s the Cicero Bunyon's was facing the same pressures that closed many small mid-century commercial businesses across the Chicago suburbs — changing neighborhood demographics, rising commercial real-estate prices, and declining roadside-stand traffic in an era of fast-food drive-throughs. The owners decided to close the business and the question of what to do with Paul became a small but genuine community concern. Several Route 66 preservation advocates began conversations with the Bunyon's family about relocating the figure to a suitable home along the historic highway.

In 2003 the Atlanta Betterment Fund — a small nonprofit civic-improvement organization based in Atlanta, Illinois — successfully negotiated to acquire Paul from the closing Cicero Bunyon's. The Betterment Fund had been working for several years on revitalization of Atlanta's small Route 66 downtown, including the restoration of the Palms Grill Cafe and the J.H. Hawes Grain Elevator Museum, and the addition of a muffler man giant fit naturally into the broader strategy of positioning Atlanta as a Route 66 destination.

The relocation itself was a small logistical adventure. Paul was disassembled into transportable sections for the roughly 150-mile move south from Cicero to Atlanta — the figure splits at the waist and the arms detach — and trucked down through central Illinois on a flatbed. Volunteers reassembled the statue on a freshly-prepared concrete pad in a small grassy lot beside Southwest Arch Street, just across from the Palms Grill Cafe and within easy walking distance of every other downtown Atlanta attraction. The relocation was completed in late summer 2003 and Paul has stood in the same spot since.

Atlanta has cared for Paul attentively. The figure has been repainted multiple times — most thoroughly during a comprehensive 2014 restoration that addressed weather damage to the fiberglass surface and refreshed all the painted details — and small maintenance projects (replacing the hot dog when it weathered, repairing storm damage, refreshing the painted lumberjack outfit) have been completed by volunteers and the American Giants Museum staff in recent years. The community ownership has been key to Paul's continued vitality as a Route 66 attraction.

Tall Paul is one member of a strange and wonderful family of American roadside statues. International Fiberglass — a company based in Venice, California — produced an estimated 600 to 1,000 oversized fiberglass figures between roughly 1962 and 1972 in molds that allowed mass production of 18-to-25-foot human figures for commercial roadside advertising. The most common figures used a single body mold (a man in a slight contrapposto stance with one arm raised holding an object and the other arm lowered with palm facing up) that could be customized with different heads, paint schemes, and hand-held props.

The Paul Bunyan lumberjack — red shirt, blue pants, bearded face, holding an axe — was one of the most popular figures and was produced in substantial numbers for restaurants, lumber yards, and tourist attractions across the country. The 'muffler man' nickname comes from a different variant — figures customized with hard hats and holding mufflers, marketed to auto-repair shops as roadside advertising — but the term has been generalized to refer to any International Fiberglass figure regardless of original customization.

Of the original International Fiberglass production run, roughly 200 figures are believed to survive in identifiable locations across the United States. Some remain in their original commercial settings; some have been relocated to museums, private collections, or roadside attractions like Atlanta's Paul; and some are slowly weathering in abandoned lots awaiting restoration. The 2023 opening of the American Giants Museum in Atlanta — just blocks from Tall Paul — has made the town the unofficial national center for muffler man scholarship, preservation conversation, and pilgrimage tourism.

The statue is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. There is no admission fee, no parking fee, and no formal staffing — Paul simply stands in his grassy lot beside Southwest Arch Street, available to be photographed, walked around, posed beside, and admired at any time. A small interpretive sign at the base of the figure provides basic information about Paul's Cicero origin and 2003 relocation, but most visitors approach the visit informally and spend 5 to 15 minutes on photos before walking across the street to the Palms Grill Cafe or down Arch Street to the American Giants Museum.

Photography is good throughout the day. Direct morning light (roughly 8am to 10am) lights Paul's face and is the consensus best time for the standard head-on portrait. Afternoon and golden-hour light produce warmer tones that flatter the fiberglass surface. Overcast days yield flatter but more uniformly lit images, useful for capturing fine details like the hot-dog texture and the lumberjack-outfit paintwork. The compact lot allows photographers to walk completely around the figure, so all angles are accessible — including the slightly absurd straight-on view of the giant hot dog held proudly forward.

The natural Atlanta combination: park in the small downtown public lot, photograph Paul (15 minutes), cross to the Palms Grill Cafe for breakfast or pie (60 minutes), walk to the American Giants Museum (45-60 minutes), then visit the Atlanta Public Library / Route 66 information point and the J.H. Hawes Grain Elevator Museum if open. The entire downtown Atlanta experience is comfortably walkable from any single parking spot and produces a satisfying 2-to-3-hour Route 66 stop without ever needing to move the car.

Atlanta, Illinois is a small town — population roughly 1,600 — in Logan County, halfway between Bloomington (20 miles north) and Lincoln (5 miles south) on the historic Route 66 corridor. The town's compact downtown has retained an unusually intact early-20th-century commercial streetscape, and the combination of the J.H. Hawes Grain Elevator Museum (a beautifully preserved 1904 working grain elevator that operates as a museum), the restored Palms Grill Cafe, the American Giants Museum, the Atlanta Public Library (housed in a striking octagonal 1908 building), and Tall Paul has turned Atlanta into one of the most-stopped small towns on Illinois Route 66.

Atlanta's Route 66 status was not always so prominent. Through the late 20th century the town's downtown was struggling commercially like many central-Illinois small towns, and several of the now-restored buildings were either vacant or housed marginal businesses. The Atlanta Betterment Fund and the broader Illinois Route 66 preservation movement — particularly the Illinois Route 66 Heritage Project — have been responsible for the deliberate, two-decade-long redevelopment of the downtown as a Route 66 destination, with Paul's 2003 arrival as one of the most visible early wins.

For Route 66 road-trippers driving the Illinois segment, Atlanta is now widely considered a must-stop. The town sits at roughly the geographic midpoint of the 301-mile Illinois Route 66 alignment and pairs naturally with morning stops in Pontiac (40 miles north) or afternoon continuation to Lincoln (5 miles south) and Springfield (40 miles south). For travelers based in Bloomington or Lincoln, Atlanta is a 20-minute or 10-minute drive respectively and works as either a half-day excursion or a quick lunch stop.