Smokey Bear wooden

Hill City, South Dakota, United States

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Characters and mascots

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A chainsaw-carved wooden Smokey Bear about 30 feet tall stands on Main Street at Dahl's Chainsaw Art in Hill City, South Dakota. A team of seven, including Dahl's Chainsaw Art owner Jordan Dahl and his brother Jarrett, built it in about ten days of physical work, reported in May 2021.

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Smokey Bear wooden

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Approximate location · 43.933° N, 103.576° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Hill City's Smokey Bear is a 30-foot chainsaw carving, and it sits on the town's main street because Smokey is the Hill City school mascot.

The statue stands at the corner of Main Street at Dahl's Chainsaw Art. The Hill City Prevailer reported on 6 May 2021 that a team of carvers had just built it. Jordan Dahl, who owns the business, described it as 30 feet from the base to the head and about 25 feet from end to end. Seven people worked on it: Jordan and his brother Jarrett, plus five carvers who came from as far as Alaska and North Carolina. Dahl said they finished it in about ten days of physical work after months of planning. Local businesses sponsored it in part.

The subject was chosen for the school. The Prevailer, citing the Hill City School District, traced the connection to a forest fire that began on 10 July 1939 north of Hill City, where a crew of about 25 local boys, including the basketball team, helped fight the blaze. Later that year, the paper reported, the school received permission to use Smokey Bear as its mascot, and it says Hill City is the only school in the nation permitted to do so. Dahl said he needed the school district's permission to carve the bear because of the Smokey Bear copyright, and the district agreed.

The Hill City visitor site bills it as the world's largest Smokey statue.

An August 2026 article by America's Best Online still describes the bear standing over Main Street.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

An outdoor statue on Main Street at Dahl's Chainsaw Art, a chainsaw-carving business in Hill City. The Prevailer reported in 2021 that passers-by were stopping to photograph it; Hill City's visitor site (October 2026) lists the business.

ACCESS

Stands outdoors at the Main Street corner of Dahl's Chainsaw Art, Hill City, in the Black Hills. Dahl's Chainsaw Art is on Main Street, listed as 100 or 108 Main Street.

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World's Largest Bigfoot (Dahl's Chainsaw Art)

Keystone, South Dakota

Billie is a seated chainsaw-carved Sasquatch about 23 feet tall, made from ponderosa pine, cedar and cottonwood by Dahl's Chainsaw Art. It stands at the corner of the carvers' property on Highway 16A in Keystone, South Dakota, less than three miles from Mount Rushmore.

Public art

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13 km away

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