World's Largest Plow

Gothenburg, Nebraska, United States

Roadside giants

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Current

Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A plow built about four times normal size from new steel and old bridge planks, made by Merle Block as a roadside showpiece for the Sod House Museum beside Interstate 80 exit 211 at Gothenburg, Nebraska.

Private to your Passport.

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World's Largest Plow

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Approximate location · 40.936° N, 100.160° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Beside Interstate 80 at Gothenburg, Nebraska, a plow built four times larger than normal was designed to make drivers pull off the highway, and, by its maker's account, it did.

Merle Block built it as a showpiece for the Sod House Museum he and his wife, Linda, opened in 1988 on three acres near the town's interstate exit. Both families had lived in sod houses in the 1880s, he told the Lincoln Journal Star in 2020. Block built a sod house himself in three weeks, using three reference books, then added what he called the world's biggest sod-raking plow, made of new steel and old bridge planks. "It was just a showpiece, right up next to the interstate at the front of the lot," he said. "People would see it and pull off." He later built a buffalo and a rider on horseback from scrap barbed wire.

The "world's biggest" label is Block's own description, as the Journal Star reported it. The World Record Academy, a record-listing group, also names it the World's Largest Plow, and describes it as welded metal tubing and angle iron with two wooden handles, so accounts of its materials differ.

Admission was free, with donations and souvenir sales, and Block recalled about 50,000 visitors a summer in the early years. The Blocks closed the museum around 2018 and listed the property in 2019. In December 2020 the Associated Press reported that three Gothenburg business owners had bought the site, which included the sod house, the red barn, the plow and the barbed-wire bison. In December 2025 the Gothenburg Leader reported that the museum was open daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., weather permitting, and that its sod house was in need of rebuilding.

The Leader describes the site as just off the interstate, off Exit 211.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

The Gothenburg Leader reported in December 2025 that the museum is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, weather permitting, from Memorial Day to Labor Day; the plow is an outdoor exhibit (Roadside America, 2026). Admission was free in the Blocks' era (Journal Star, 2020); the Leader (2025) mentions donations. Confirm hours before a special trip.

ACCESS

At the Sod House Museum beside I-80 exit 211, Gothenburg, Nebraska.

COMMUNITY