Big Joe Palooka, Carved in Limestone

In the little town of Oolitic stands a nine foot, twenty thousand pound boxer carved entirely from Indiana limestone. He is Joe Palooka, the heavyweight hero of one of the most popular comic strips in America during the nineteen thirties and forties. This stone came from a region that called itself the limestone capital of the world, the quarries around Bedford whose pale rock built the Empire State Building and the National Cathedral.

In nineteen forty eight, to mark one hundred years of the Indiana Limestone Company, master carvers shaped this giant from a single block. Some forty five hundred people came to the dedication in Bedford, including Ham Fisher, the cartoonist who created Palooka. When vandals found the statue in its lonely spot, the people of Oolitic took him in, rededicating their champion between the post office and the town hall, where he keeps his fists raised to this day.