Casey: The Town That Went Big

Casey, Illinois has about two thousand four hundred residents and twelve Guinness World Records, which works out to roughly one world record per two hundred people.

A local businessman named Jim Bolin started in two thousand eleven with a wind chime. Then came the world's largest rocking chair, knitting needles and crochet hook, golf tee, mailbox, and birdcage, all installed in and around downtown Casey. The mailbox alone measures over five thousand seven hundred cubic feet. Bolin's goal was straightforward: his small town was struggling, and giant things would give people a reason to stop.

It worked. Casey draws visitors from across the country who come specifically to stand next to oversized objects and photograph themselves looking small. The approach has been imitated elsewhere, but Casey did it first and did it biggest. In a part of Illinois where small towns have been emptying out for decades, Casey filled its downtown by going in the opposite direction from subtlety.