Rusty sledgehammer Muffler Man (Lincoln Place)

Granite City's Route 66 centennial giants include a figure made for the people who worked in its rail yards and steel mills. Great Rivers & Routes describes Rusty the Steel Worker, 20 feet tall, at the entrance to Lincoln Place, which it calls one of the oldest working-class neighbourhoods in the city. According to the same tourism body, fiberglass artist Mark Cline molded him from a 1960s original Muffler Man. He wears a hard hat and steel-toed boots, holds a red sledgehammer, and has a lunchbox at his feet that reads 'Made in America'. A plaque calls him a 'sentinel of the working class'. The Illinois Office of Tourism announced in June 2025 that Rusty and a mechanic figure named Earl were among the new Route 66 giants due that summer. Great Rivers & Routes lists him with Earl, the giant fork and the neon sign park.