Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox

Bemidji built a Paul Bunyan for its first Winter Carnival, which opened on January 14, 1937. Lennord Pitney designed him and Carl Aldal, a cement worker in town, built him: 18 feet of concrete over a frame, in a plaid shirt, standing on the shore of Lake Bemidji.

Exhaust through the nostrils

Babe was not built to stand still. N. Edward Johnson, who ran a boat factory in town, made the ox as a parade float and mounted it on a truck from Grinols Implement, with the exhaust routed out through the nostrils so it steamed in the cold. The float toured to advertise the carnival. In 1939 Babe was set down beside Paul on the lakeshore and stayed there.

Listed

The National Register of Historic Places added the pair on March 10, 1988, under reference 88000204. Registers do not usually take roadside statues. The nomination rested on age: every other giant Bunyan in the country, and the ones in Maine as well, came later, which leaves these two as the surviving originals of a form that spread across the northern states after the war.

Both were restored in 2022. Babe was lifted 15 inches onto a new footing, because runoff from a plaza built in 2015 had been freezing and thawing around the hooves and breaking the concrete apart.

They stand in front of the tourist information center, which keeps a case of oversized objects presented as Paul's belongings.

Free, outdoors, and open at any hour, on the Lake Bemidji shore with parking beside them. The tourist information center behind the statues keeps daytime hours and holds the collection of oversized objects, along with the local highway and carnival material.

The lakefront path runs past them, and the pair works as the town's gathering point as much as a photo stop, so there is usually something happening around them through the summer. Winter is the season they were built for, and the wind coming off the lake is the main thing to dress for.

Paul Bunyan Park has restrooms and picnic tables in season. Brainerd and Akeley both have Bunyans of their own within a 2 hour drive for anyone collecting them.