This tiny Illinois town of 2,400 people holds 12 Guinness World Records

Casey’s giant secret is hiding in plain sight

Casey, Illinois, covers just 2.6 square miles in the southeastern corner of the state. About 2,400 people live here, and on the surface, it looks like any other small town along Interstate 70.

But walk a few blocks downtown and you’ll start noticing things that don’t quite add up. A rocking chair the size of a house.

A wind chime that towers five stories above the sidewalk. A mailbox you can climb inside and actually mail a letter from.

Casey holds 12 current Guinness World Records, and most of them are right outside your door.

One man’s big idea put Casey on the map

Jim Bolin grew up in Casey and spent his life here running Bolin Enterprises, a pipeline and tank maintenance company.

Somewhere along the way, he decided his town needed something to draw people in, and he had exactly the right crew to do it. His company’s welders and fabricators got to work.

The first piece came together in 2011: a wind chime so tall it catches the eye from a block away. The response from visitors and locals convinced Bolin to keep going.

Over the next 15 years, Casey racked up 12 Guinness World Records. Bolin passed away in January 2026, but his company’s leadership has pledged to keep building.

Pull the rope on a 49-foot wind chime

The wind chime that launched everything stands on East Main Street, and the scale of it stops people cold.

At 49 feet from the ground, with a single chime running 42 feet long, the whole structure weighs close to 17,000 pounds. The steel tubes are massive, but the thing works.

You can grab a rope and pull, setting the chimes swinging in a low, deep ring that carries down the block. Guinness officially certified it in June 2012, and it has been drawing people off the highway ever since.

A 56-foot wooden rocker you can actually make move

Right across from the wind chime sits the World’s Largest Rocking Chair, and it takes a few seconds to process what you’re looking at. The chair stands 56 feet 1 inch tall and runs nearly 33 feet wide.

The whole thing weighs more than 46,000 pounds and took over two years to build. Look up at the headrest and you’ll spot a carved dove and olive branch.

To rock it, you need about 10 people pushing together in rhythm. It moves.

Slowly, but it moves.

Mail a letter from inside a world-record mailbox

The World’s Largest Mailbox is exactly what it sounds like, but the inside surprises most people.

The mailbox holds 5,743 cubic feet of internal volume, and a hidden stairway inside the post stand leads you up into the box itself.

It has a working mail slot, so you can drop in a letter or postcard and it actually gets delivered. The big red flag on the side raises just like on the one at the end of your driveway.

It’s a fully functional mailbox. Just a lot bigger.

A seesaw the length of a tennis court

The World’s Largest Teeter Totter stretches 82 feet from end to end, certified by Guinness as the longest seesaw on the planet.

It sits right on East Main Street near the wind chime, so you can knock out two records in one stop.

Head a few blocks west on Main Street and you’ll find the World’s Largest Barber Pole standing 14 feet 7 inches in front of Tina’s Barber Shop.

Guinness required it to actually spin, so they built it to spin, and it does, the red and white stripes turning in a slow, steady loop.

Tee up next to a 30-foot golf tee

Out at the Casey Country Club, a golf tee rises 30 feet 9 inches from the ground and weighs more than 6,600 pounds. It went up in 2012 and earned its Guinness certification the following year.

The World’s Largest Golf Driver lives at the Visitor’s Center on South Central Avenue, so golf fans can get both in one trip.

Neither one requires anything more than a parking spot and a phone with a camera, and the photo opportunities are hard to pass up.

A pitchfork honoring the farmers who built this region

The World’s Largest Pitchfork weighs 1,940 pounds and stands outside Richard’s Farm Restaurant, a family-run place that has been feeding the community since 1972.

Bolin designed the pitchfork to fit the restaurant’s setting and nod to the farming history of the region.

A few blocks away on West Alabama Avenue, you’ll find the World’s Largest Key in front of the old Downtown Garage. It stands over 28 feet tall and was modeled after the key to Bolin’s own Chevy truck.

Step inside wooden clogs big enough for 15 people

One of the few indoor record holders lives inside Wildflour Bakery and Candy Co., where a pair of wooden clogs sit on display.

Each clog weighs about 2,500 pounds, and both together can hold up to 15 people standing inside at once. Visitors toss coins into the shoes to help cover maintenance costs for Casey’s attractions.

Back outside on South Central Avenue, the World’s Largest Swizzle Spoon measures 11 feet 8 inches, one of the smaller record holders in town, but still impossible to miss.

Hunt down 20-plus big things hiding around town

Beyond the 12 Guinness record holders, Casey has more than 20 other oversized objects scattered through the downtown. A giant birdcage big enough to step inside for a photo.

An enormous mousetrap. A towering ear of corn.

An oversized pencil. A big bookworm sits out front of the public library, and a toy glider plane is on display near the airport.

Many of the items carry a Bible verse, a personal touch Bolin added to each one. Pick up a map at the Visitor’s Center and start checking them off.

Walk the whole downtown in an afternoon

Most of the attractions pack into a walkable three-to-five block stretch of downtown, so you can cover a lot of ground on foot without backtracking.

The Big Things in a Small Town Workshop, where all these record breakers were actually built, is open for visitors to walk through and see where the work happened. Casey has no traffic lights.

The pace here is slow in the best way, and the whole place feels like a version of small-town America that got a little carried away with a great idea.

A legacy too big for one small town to contain

Tour buses from across the Midwest now make regular stops here.

What started as one man’s idea to help his community has turned Casey into a destination people plan road trips around.

Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday said Bolin showed how one person can make a big difference.

The team at Bolin Enterprises and the people of Casey have committed to maintaining what exists and adding new pieces over time.

The records keep the town on the map, but it’s the story behind them that makes people come back.

Visit the big things in Casey, Illinois

You can stop at the Visitor’s Center at 4 South Central Avenue to grab a printed map of every big thing in town before you start exploring.

Casey sits right off Interstate 70, about two hours from both St. Louis and Indianapolis, making it a natural midpoint stop on a longer road trip.

Almost all the outdoor attractions are free and open year-round. Hours for indoor spots like Wildflour Bakery vary, so check the official website before your visit.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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