Giant Pumpkin (Cameron's Pub)

Half Moon Bay's pumpkin festival is built around real gourds, but its best-known pumpkin is made of steel, concrete and ceramic tile. Artist Peter Hazel, who grew up in Half Moon Bay, built it after a conversation at Cameron's Pub, which the festival calls a 'charming English pub', on Highway 1; according to the festival it is 11 feet high, 12 feet long and 10,000 pounds. The festival calls it the world's largest pumpkin sculpture; the Half Moon Bay Review in 2023 wrote only that the town 'just might boast' that title.

The Review reported that the pub's owner commissioned it in 2012, when Hazel was just beginning to work as an artist. He told the Review it took two to three months. A rebar cage rises from a 6-inch concrete base and is wrapped in mesh and mortar, then covered with ceramic tile. The festival says the orange tiles were made from scratch in Hazel's own kilns; the festival's account has him aiming for 'the beefy, burly, giant pumpkin look'. The pub's owner is quoted on the festival page: 'Castroville has the Giant Artichoke … Half Moon Bay should have the Great Pumpkin!'