World's Largest Cuckoo Clock (Sugarcreek, Ohio)

Sugarcreek, Ohio, United States

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A mechanical cuckoo clock 23.5 feet high and 24 feet wide stands at Main Street and Broadway in the Swiss Village of Sugarcreek, Ohio. Built for a restaurant near Wilmot, it was moved to Sugarcreek in May 2012 and, according to the village visitor site, performs on the half hour.

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World's Largest Cuckoo Clock (Sugarcreek, Ohio)

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40.50311° N, 81.64058° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A cuckoo clock 23 and a half feet high and 24 feet wide stands on the corner of Main Street and Broadway in the Swiss Village of Sugarcreek, Ohio, and on the half hour a cuckoo pops out, a band appears and a couple dances to Swiss polka music.

The clock began life elsewhere. According to the Ohio History Connection's historical marker, the Alpine Alpa restaurant in Wilmot commissioned clockmaker Karl Schleutermann to build it in 1963, and it was finished twelve years and $50,000 later. Ohio Magazine, in 2015, gave a different timeline: it said the clock, 6.5 feet deep, was built on the hill behind the restaurant six years before it appeared on the cover of the 1978 Guinness Book of World Records. The village's visitor site dates that cover to 1977.

Weather took its toll. The marker says that after about 30 years outdoors the clock was restored to working order in 2007 with help from Hampton Hotel's Save-A-Landmark programme. The restaurant closed two years later, and the owner of the local store Walnut Creek Cheese bought the clock and donated it to the village of Sugarcreek, which bills itself as Ohio's "Little Switzerland". The marker records the move to its new home in May 2012, after village leaders and community members got it running again.

Keeping a mechanism of this size going is an ongoing job. In 2015 the village's mayor told Ohio Magazine that a machine shop in town remanufactures worn parts, so that "we're back to running again".

The village visitor site says the clock is free to see and performs from 9am to 9pm, April through November, weather permitting. Ohio Magazine noted in 2015 that the show was not given during the cold winter months.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Outdoor clock in the centre of the Swiss Village. The village visitor site lists a free show every half hour, 9am to 9pm, April through November, weather permitting: a cuckoo appears, a band plays and a couple dances.

ACCESS

On the corner of Main Street and Broadway in the centre of Sugarcreek's Swiss Village, Ohio. It stands outdoors on the street corner; the village visitor site lists it as free to see.

COMMUNITY