"The Iron Zoo"
Who woulda thunk we could get two posts' worth of content from Coalinga, CA? Well, folks, we were as surprised as y'all. Here, for your viewing pleasure, we present the work of Jean Dakessian Jones. She painted a bunch of these so-called grasshopper pumps as an art/local boosterism project. The plan was that the slick (ha) roadside attraction would bring travelers off the Interstate and into town. Her project met with mixed success, as the hamlet today is not what you'd consider a tourist mecca. (However is it much more of a tourist mecca than Mecca, CA...a dusty, somnolent town on the edge of the Salton Sea)
Interesting webbit for all the webbit fans out there: both the Iron Zoo and the Horned Toad Derby are mentioned in the 2004 compendium Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Encyclopedia Of The Bizarre:
Amazing, Strange, Inexplicable, Weird And All True! (pages 60 and 100, respectively)
