Berry Patch building (moved to Ellerbe)

Ellerbe, North Carolina, United States

Buildings and structures

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

The Berry Patch in Ellerbe, North Carolina, sells ice cream and produce from a strawberry-shaped building billed as the World's Largest Strawberry. It was moved to Cargo Road in 2012 to make way for a bypass, and Smithsonian magazine reports it was built in 2002.

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Berry Patch building (moved to Ellerbe)

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Site-level location · 35.0645° N, 79.7748° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A strawberry-shaped building sells ice cream beside US 220 in Ellerbe, North Carolina, and it has already survived one road project by being lifted onto a truck.

The Berry Patch is a produce stand and ice cream shop, and its strawberry-shaped building is billed as the World's Largest Strawberry. According to Garden & Gun, the family began growing strawberries in 1995 and sold them from the back of a truck, then built a wood-and-foam berry to make drivers stop. Smithsonian magazine reports the building went up in 2002, made of sheet rock and polyurethane foam molded to its berry shape. Garden & Gun gives its size as 24 feet tall and four tons; the owner told NPR in 2024 that it is 25 feet tall.

In 2012 the building had to move because the North Carolina Department of Transportation planned a new bypass. The Richmond County Daily Journal reported that a crew spent about eight hours getting the four-ton building onto a house mover's truck, that state troopers escorted it because it filled both lanes, and that the move cost $9,500, according to the owner. The paper put the trip at about a mile and a half, from North Highway 220 in Rockingham to Cargo Road in Ellerbe, where a new foundation and plumbing were waiting. An owner told Garden & Gun the distance was half a mile.

Carolina Country magazine's 2020 Carolina's Finest contest named it favourite ice cream shop. A visitor writing for Unearth The Voyage in June 2026 described homemade ice cream, a produce market, rocking chairs and outdoor seating at the site. The building is the shop itself, so a visit means walking up to a working business.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

The strawberry-shaped building is the ice cream shop, beside a produce stand. A June 2026 visitor account describes homemade ice cream, a market of produce and local goods, rocking chairs and a sandy seating area outdoors.

ACCESS

The Berry Patch is a roadside business at 351 Cargo Road, Ellerbe, off US 220 (Exit 25) in Richmond County. The building is part of the working shop, so visits follow the business's trading times.

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