The Larger Than Life Uncle Sam Statue in Danbury, Connecticut

At an imposing 38 feet tall and 4,500 pounds, the fiberglass Uncle Sam statue that stands sentinel outside Connecticut’s Danbury Railway Museum may be the world’s largest. Or maybe not: There’s another one in the Midwest that’s a tad taller—but only if the base is included in the calculations.

Both statues are said to have been created in the 1960s as advertising icons for Uncle Sam’s, a now-defunct restaurant chain in Ohio. By 1971, one of the Sams had relocated to Connecticut for a new gig as a greeter at the Danbury Fair. After 10 years, it moved on, taking up residence at the Magic Forest theme park in Lake George, New York. 

When the park was sold in 2018, the statue next seemed destined for Troy, New York, where Massachusetts native Sam Wilson had operated a meat-packing business that supplied troops during the War of 1812. The term “Uncle Sam” is said to have derived from the “U.S.” stamp on Wilson’s barrels, which marked them as government property but also, some fancied, as coming from “Uncle” Sam Wilson. Soon, Uncle Sam was being used as a stand-in for the government in political cartoons.

In the 1870s, Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast popularized what became Uncle Sam’s signature look: thin, white-haired, goateed, and wearing a tall hat with striped pants, vest, and a swallow-tail coat. Then came James Montgomery Flagg’s 1917 “I Want You” recruitment poster, which elevated Uncle Sam to pop culture celebrity and created perhaps America’s first meme a century before anyone knew what that was.

Patriotism sells, and in the years that followed, Uncle Sam’s likeness promoted everything from apples to car insurance. And restaurants, of course.

The Lake George statue never went to Troy, as Danbury swooped in as top bidder. In May 2019, after a few months of restoration, a rejuvenated Uncle Sam made his grand return to Connecticut as Danbury’s biggest photo op.