The Cardiff Giant
George Hull had a 10-foot man carved out of gypsum in 1868, buried him on his cousin's farm at Cardiff, and waited a year before sending well diggers to that exact spot. Thousands paid to see the petrified giant they pulled out. P.T. Barnum, refused a sale, had a copy made and exhibited it as the real one, so for a while the public could pay to see a fake of a fake.
Field Guide Entry
The plan
Hull was a cigar maker from Binghamton who had lost an argument with a preacher about whether giants had once walked the earth. He bought a block of gypsum in Iowa, had it carved in Chicago into a man with an agonized face, aged the surface with acid and darning needles to fake pores, and shipped it east. In November 1868 it went into the ground behind the barn of his cousin William Newell, at Cardiff in Onondaga County.
The discovery
In October 1869 Newell hired two men to dig a well, and told them where. They found the giant about three feet down. Newell put a tent over the hole and began charging, first 25 cents and then 50, and the road to the farm filled with wagons.
Scholars split immediately. Some read it as a petrified man, some as an ancient statue. Othniel C. Marsh of Yale looked at it and called it a decided humbug, pointing out that a body could not have been left in the ground long enough to petrify and still show fresh tool marks.
Barnum
Barnum offered to buy it, was turned down, and had his own copy carved. He put it on show in New York as the genuine article and left the original owners to sue. The syndicate's lawyer is said to have declined the case with the line that his client's giant was no less a fraud than Barnum's.
Hull confessed in December 1869. The confession did not slow the crowds much.
Where it is
The giant has been at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown since 1947, laid out in a barn where you walk up and look down at him. He is still 10 feet long, still gypsum, and still drawing an entrance fee, 157 years after the first one.
Visiting Information
The Farmers' Museum opens Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 4pm, and a combined ticket with the Fenimore Art Museum across the road is the better value if you are doing both.
The giant lies in the main barn on the historic village grounds, which are grass and gravel paths, so the walk from the entrance is short but outdoors. Allow half a day for the whole village and its livestock, or about an hour if the giant is the reason you came.
Cooperstown fills in summer around the Baseball Hall of Fame, and parking in the village is easier in the morning.
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