Giant Egg

Mentone, Indiana, honours its egg-farming heritage with a concrete egg on a downtown corner. Estimated at about 3,000 pounds, it is a concrete shell over a welded steel frame. It was built in 1946, according to the Mentone Chamber of Commerce, to advertise the town's egg show. The chamber says the idea came from Ed Ward, manager of the Northern Indiana CO-OP Association, and that Hugh Rickel designed and built it. Sheet metal was the first idea, but Rickel doubted it would last, so he welded steel rods up and down with one through the centre and the egg was plastered in concrete.

The chamber says it took twelve men to load the egg onto a truck for Warsaw, where it stood on the courthouse lawn for two weeks advertising the show. It then came back to Mentone with nowhere to go, and the CO-OP donated the land at Main and Morgan streets where it stands. The chamber found a photograph of the egg on the courthouse lawn in the 13 March 1946 issue of the Mentone CO-OP News, but also dates its construction to late 1946, and says it assumes it was built earlier that year. A 2024 South Bend News-Times piece says the plan began in 1945.