A 17,452-pound concrete Lincoln cent sitting on a residential street in Woodruff is about as Wisconsin roadside-weird as it gets. The World’s Largest Penny measures 10 feet in diameter and 18 inches thick, and was dedicated on May 29, 1954, as a monument to the Arbor Vitae-Woodruff School students and the community effort to build a local hospital. It stands at 820 3rd Ave., near the former Arbor Vitae-Woodruff School and just a short walk from the Dr. Kate Museum.
The giant coin commemorates one of the strangest and most successful fundraisers in Wisconsin history. In 1952, geometry teacher Otto Burich and his students launched a campaign to collect one million pennies for Dr. Kate Pelham Newcomb’s hospital project. The appeal spread far beyond Woodruff: 1.7 million pennies arrived from 48 states in just 104 days, and 10,000 people turned out for the Million Penny Parade on Memorial Day in 1953. Dr. Kate, known as the “Angel on Snowshoes” for traveling through brutal Northwoods winters to reach patients, eventually saw the Lakeland Memorial Hospital open in 1954. The giant penny remains a monument to the bizarrely effective idea that a million tiny contributions can accomplish something enormous.
