Big Beau alligator

Beaumont, Texas, United States

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Big Beau is a 135-foot-long alligator sculpture beside Interstate 10, about 15 miles southwest of Beaumont, Texas, at Gator Country Adventure Park & Sanctuary. Texas Highways (2026) gives the upper jaw as 21 feet high. Park owner Gary Saurage, a reality-television personality, conceived it in 2012 as roadside advertising; it has a lumber and metal-sheeting body with a metal-tube jaw and, according to Texas Highways, took about eight months to build. The park's website says it houses over 450 American alligators, crocodiles, snakes and other wildlife.

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Big Beau alligator

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

Approximate location · 30.061° N, 94.201° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Big Beau was conceived to catch the eye of children in the back seat of passing cars.

Texas Highways (2026) describes a 135-foot-long alligator with an upper jaw 21 feet above ground, beside Interstate 10 about 15 miles southwest of Beaumont at Gator Country Adventure Park & Sanctuary. The magazine says park owner Gary Saurage came up with the idea in 2012. At that point Saurage was coming off a starring role in the CMT reality series Gator 911, and the magazine says he asked for help on Facebook, drawing dozens of strangers. The Beaumont Convention and Visitors Bureau, in 2016, described the alligator as 135 feet long and 30 feet tall.

According to the magazine, a nearby plant nursery owner gave Saurage several old hoop-style greenhouses in exchange for taking them down and clearing the property, and these framed the body. Treated lumber wrapped in green metal sheeting completed it, and Saurage built the upper jaw from metal tubing and sheet metal. The teeth are cut from plywood and the eyes are old tires. The sculpture has survived a couple of hurricanes.

The magazine says the 15-acre park began as an abandoned alligator farm that Saurage reopened in 2006. The park's own website lists its address as 21159 FM 365, Beaumont, at I-10 exit 838, and says it houses over 450 American alligators, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, tortoises and other wildlife. The magazine counts about 650 alligators.

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