Uncle Sam (Danbury Railway Museum)

Danbury, Connecticut, United States

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A 38-foot, 4,500-pound fiberglass Uncle Sam stands outside the Danbury Railway Museum on White Street, Danbury, Connecticut. It greeted visitors at the Great Danbury State Fair from 1971 to 1981 and returned to Danbury in 2019.

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Uncle Sam (Danbury Railway Museum)

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Site-level location · 41.3979° N, 73.4501° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

For a decade Danbury fairgoers arranged to "meet me at Uncle Sam", and the statue they meant now stands guard over the Danbury Railway Museum's parking lot. It is 38 feet tall, made of fiberglass and weighs 4,500 pounds. The museum bills him as the world's tallest Uncle Sam; Yankee magazine wrote in 2024 that he "may be the world's largest" but noted that a statue in the Midwest is slightly taller if its base is counted.

Yankee says he is said to have been made in the 1960s as an advertising figure for Uncle Sam's, a now-defunct Ohio restaurant chain. By 1971 he was at the Great Danbury State Fair, where he stayed until the fair closed in 1981 after 112 years, according to the museum. The Danbury Railway Museum says Fairy Tale Magic Forest, a theme park in Lake George, New York, then bought him.

When the park closed in late 2018, the museum says, a sale to Troy, New York, was planned until Mayor Mark Boughton outbid Troy and brought the statue home. The museum says corporate partners and service organisations paid for the restoration; NBC Connecticut reported that locals and businesses donated thousands of dollars. A site near Interstate 84 was first considered but dropped, and building work in the museum's lot began in spring 2019. The dedication was on 25 July 2019, and NBC Connecticut quoted a lifelong resident who worked at the fair for 15 years recalling that he saluted and greeted everybody entering.

In 2024 Yankee described the statue as standing outside the museum; the museum calls it a permanent exhibit, and its opening hours apply to the museum itself.

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A 38-foot fiberglass Uncle Sam in the parking lot of the Danbury Railway Museum. The museum calls it a permanent exhibit and Yankee magazine described it in 2024 as a photo spot. Museum hours apply only to the museum.

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In the Danbury Railway Museum's parking lot beside White Street, Danbury. In 2024 Yankee described the statue as standing outside the museum; the museum calls it a permanent exhibit, and its opening hours apply to the museum itself.

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39 km away

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