Bemidji's Paul Bunyan statue nears 90 years as landmark icon

Bemidji’s Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox began as a winter carnival gimmick and grew into the city’s most recognizable landmark. As the statues near their 90th anniversary, they still draw visitors to the shore of Lake Bemidji, still define downtown’s image, and still give Beltrami County a symbol that reaches far beyond nostalgia.

From carnival stunt to civic landmark

The pair was unveiled on January 14, 1937, during Bemidji’s winter carnival, a tourism effort that had taken shape the year before. The idea was simple and audacious: build a larger-than-life lumberjack and his ox, turn them into mascots, and use them to put Bemidji on the map. That gamble worked almost immediately, and what began as a promotion became a permanent part of the city’s identity.

Local residents built both figures. Cyril M. Dickinson of Dickinson Construction Co. oversaw Paul Bunyan’s construction, while Jim Payton, manager of the local power company, supervised Babe. Paul was modeled on then-Mayor Earl Bucklen, and Babe was modeled on a large ox from the Headwaters Logging Camp. In other words, the statues were not generic roadside novelties. They were built from specific local people, local labor and local lumber-camp memory.

Paul Bunyan still stands 18 feet tall, weighs about 2.5 tons, and rests on 5.5 tons of concrete footings. Builders used a wood framework, reinforcing bars and cement stucco so the figure could withstand high winds off the lake. The work took 737 man-hours, a reminder that the icon was engineered as carefully as it was imagined.

Why the pair endured

Babe’s journey helps explain why the statues became more than a one-season attraction. The blue ox was first displayed on a Model T Ford, then traveled to St. Paul and the Twin Cities State Fair before being placed permanently beside Paul in 1938. That travel turned the pair into a traveling spectacle before they settled into the lakeshore setting that visitors still associate with Bemidji today.

The statues quickly became a tourist sensation and were featured in Life Magazine. Eastman Kodak later identified Paul Bunyan and Babe as the second most photographed icon in the nation, a claim that reflects how deeply the pair entered the visual identity of Minnesota tourism. By then, the statues had already begun to serve a broader role: they were not only an attraction but a shorthand for Bemidji itself.

That status has carried into official recognition. Paul Bunyan and Babe have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988, placing them among the region’s most visible historic assets. The listing helps explain why the pair remains part landmark, part memory bank and part civic branding tool for the city.

The statue still works as a living symbol

Visit Bemidji describes Paul Bunyan and Babe as a defining Bemidji landmark since 1937 and says they will celebrate 90 years in 2027. That longevity matters because the statues still do real work for the city. They are the image on postcards, the backdrop for family photos, and the first stop for many people arriving in downtown Bemidji or heading toward the lake.

That visibility matters economically as well as culturally. A landmark that people seek out does more than symbolize a place. It pulls visitors toward nearby shops, restaurants and public spaces, and it gives local businesses a familiar image to lean on when they market Bemidji to travelers passing through Beltrami County. The statues’ endurance shows how a single public object can support both civic pride and tourism traffic across generations.

The pair’s staying power also comes from how well they fit the region’s broader identity. Visit Bemidji says the area is shaped by lakes, forests, and Ojibwe and Anishinaabe heritage, and Paul and Babe now sit within that larger story rather than apart from it. The statues may have started as a carnival stunt, but they now help frame how the city introduces itself to outsiders and remembers itself from within.

A landmark that has weathered change

The statues have not remained untouched by time. MPR News reported in 2024 that the pair were 87 years old then, and that Paul lost an arm in 2021. That kind of wear is part of the public life of any landmark that has spent decades in wind, snow and sun on the lakeshore. It also reinforces the sense that the statue is not a museum piece sealed off from daily life. It is a working civic symbol that has aged with the community around it.

For longtime residents, the statues are tied to memory. For visitors, they are the first visual proof that Bemidji is the home of Paul Bunyan lore. For downtown, they are part of the city’s marketing identity. And for Beltrami County, they remain one of the clearest examples of how a local idea can outlast its original purpose and become part of the region’s permanent public landscape.

How the story now reaches into Beltrami County history

The approaching 90th anniversary also connects to a larger moment in public history. The Beltrami County Historical Society is hosting America 250-related public programs at the Beltrami County History Center in downtown Bemidji, using the lead-up to the national commemoration to draw attention to local history. That makes the Paul and Babe story more than an anniversary feature. It becomes part of a broader effort to explain how local symbols, regional heritage and public memory intersect.

That framing matters in Bemidji, where history is not just preserved in archives. It is displayed in public spaces, on the lakeshore, and in the places people pass every day. Paul Bunyan and Babe began as a promotional idea in 1936 and were unveiled in 1937, but they now function as a durable piece of Beltrami County’s civic identity. Ninety years on, they still tell visitors where they are and remind residents what their city chose to become.