Perhaps 100 people gathered at City Hall Plaza in Webster City for the official unveiling of a sculpture honoring one of the most iconic products ever produced here: Beam Manufacturing's Doodle Bug scooter. Timing for the event coincided with the annual reunion of the Doodle Bug Club of America. Designed and produced by local artists, the sculpture is three times the size of an actual scooter. Mo Seamonds, shown here, said, simply "It's a great day for Webster City."

For a small state — Iowa ranks 23rd in land area — it’s home to lots of things claiming to be the “world’s largest.”

Many readers have visited the world’s largest truck stop in Walcott, or the world’s largest man-made grotto in West Bend. Strawberry Point says its 15-foot-high strawberry is the world champion, and Sac City says the same about its 10,000-pound popcorn ball. The world’s largest garden trowel, at Meredith Corporation headquarters in Des Moines, is highly visible; more obscure, is the world’s largest concrete garden gnome, at Reiman Gardens, Ames.

After years of planning and hard work, about 100 people, many riding restored Doodle Bug scooters themselves, watched as a bigger-than-life Doodle Bug made its debut at City Hall Plaza Friday in Webster City.

Mo Seamonds told how it came to be.

“It was sometime in 2019 when Claude Christian, a welder, started talking about it. From the start, it was conceived as a community symbol, a photo opportunity, something to bring notoriety to Webster City. For a time, work was done in the high school shop. Daven Gilespie worked many evenings on it.”

But like many things, work on the sculpture came to a halt in early 2020 as the Covid 19 pandemic descended on Webster City.

It wasn’t until this spring when things really got going again, as fabrication, welding and sanding of the metal frame was completed.

Next was painting.

Mertz Engineering, of Webster City, offered to powder-paint the sculpture, but it was too large for its spray booth. Premium Fabrication and Powder Coating, of Boone, was hired to do the painting, and Dean Bowden, of Webster City, offered a trailer to move the frame to Boone, and back to Webster City.

“It was a tricky business, scaling up the scooter to 3 times life size,” Seamonds admitted. “Scooter experts Don Nokes, Vern Ratcliff and a few others helped us verify the accuracy of our dimensions.”

The issue of where to put the finished sculpture is a story in itself.

“When we first had the idea of a giant Doodle Bug, I approached Kent Harfst,” Seamonds said. “He immediately liked it, and suggested the best spot might be in East Twin Park. That was in 2019. Well, five years later, East Twin Park has been completely transformed, and there really wasn’t room for the sculpture any more. We needed a new home.”

Seamons never considered putting the piece in West Twin Park.

She explained: “Those sculptures are there to start a conversation, to get you to think about things — size, shape, color — in a different way. It’s fundamentally about an artist sharing his or her point of view.”

She continued, “But the Doodle Bug is pure fun. It makes you smile. The size calls attention to the sculpture in a symbolic, playful way. We approached City Manager John Harrenstein and he suggested we put it at City Hall Plaza, at least for now. Just about everybody thinks it’s a great, high-visibility place for it.”

High visibility and highly appropriate too. Although gone without a trace, the Beam factory where 40,000 much smaller Doodle Bug scooters were manufactured stood only about 200 yards to the north.

Who knew in 1946, when the scooter was the latest product of the Beam factory, Webster City would still be celebrating it more than 70 years later?

Who would have thought it possible loyal bug fans would descend on Webster City each September to celebrate their favorite motorbike, and the strong bonds that have developed around it?

Now, when people visit Webster City, it’s a good bet they’ll want their photo taken with the Big Bug downtown.

And for now at least, it’s a safe bet it’s the world’s largest.