Ever since Model Ts first roamed the earth, attention-grabbing roadside curiosities—giant concrete dinosaurs, house-sized artichokes and the like—have been luring drivers off the asphalt to enrich community coffers. Many such awe-inspiring sights now anchor the local identity: Where would Cawker City, Kansas (pop. 469), be without its enormous ball of twine? And yet this humble niche of the tourism market has proven to be surprisingly thick with intrigue. Many towns claim the mythical logger Paul Bunyan as a native son, for example, and heated disputes over records (biggest, longest, tallest) are commonplace. As silly as they might seem, however, these retro totems all deserve their place in history. Here are eight favorites worth a detour.

1. JUMBO SIX-PACK (La Crosse, Wisconsin)
Even giants need to blow off steam occasionally. Or so you might think after seeing the towering six-pack of La Crosse Lager outside the City Brewery. The super-sized sixer is actually a set of labeled storage tanks that can hold up to 688,200 gallons of beer. Let’s hope that giant is friendly when he’s been drinking.

2. CARHENGE (Alliance, Nebraska)
After blasting through Nebraska’s sand hills on scenic Route 2, take a break to meditate on the ancients . . . of Detroit. This automotive hosanna to Stonehenge consists of 38 vehicles spray-painted a matte gray. Built in 1987, Carhenge joined a veritable bounty of Americanhenges past and present, including Foamhenge in Natural Bridge, Virginia, and Santa Fe’s Fridgehenge (sadly defunct).

3. ALBERT THE BULL (Audubon, Iowa)
There are other big bulls out there, but Albert cannot be touched—or moved. Made of 45 tons of concrete and steel, the peaceful-looking bovine looms large over western Iowa and beyond. He even graces the home page of Audubon’s chamber of commerce website.

4. WORLD'S LARGEST HEDGE MAZE (Wahiawa, Hawaii)
Even pineapple haters have good reason to stop at the Dole Plantation, just a half-hour from Waikiki Beach on Oahu. Covering more than two acres, the maze is made of 11,400 plants, including flowering pineapples, naturally. Negotiating the tangle of pathways—there are more than three miles of them—takes most visitors roughly an hour ($6).

5. DRIVE-THRU TREES (Leggett, California)
Why drive your car though a tree? If you have to ask, we can’t help you. It’s something primal, mystical and, well, dumb. For true seekers there is only one locale: Northern California’s Highway 101, also known as the Redwood Highway. Begin in Leggett (175 miles north of San Francisco) at the Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree. (People have been passing through a bored-out hole in its base since the early 1930s.) Once you’ve mastered that, proceed to a Drive-On tree 40 miles north, in Myers Flat. Cars use the helpful ramp to mount the felled giant for a photo op.

6. BIGGEST OFFICE CHAIR (Anniston, Alabama)
The 33-foot-tall chair in front of Miller’s Office Furniture thrust Anniston to the front of the pack in the heated race to lay claim to the World’s Largest Office Chair. The Swiss, however, are threatening to go bigger.

7. CORN PALACE (Mitchell, South Dakota)
The “agricultural showplace of the world” draws some 500,000 visitors a year with intricate murals fashioned from ears of corn (13 shades at last count), prairie grasses and other native plants. With its onion domes and minarets, this heartland attraction looks oddly like Red Square on the Prairie.

8. BALL OF TWINE (Cawker City, Kansas)
Rather than throw away spare bits of twine, the late Frank Stoeber began wrapping them together in 1953. Today his ball has swelled to 40 feet around and contains an estimated 8 million feet of twine. The town has become the butt of more than a few jokes, says caretaker Linda Clover, but she shakes them off. “It makes people smile,” she says. “People like it because life is complicated—and it’s so simple.”

7,000+
That’s how many attractions are listed at the exhaustive RoadsideAmerica.com. Its entertaining dispatches from North America’s highways and byways treat the big players and the lesser-known gems (say, the world’s third-largest fireplug) with equal amounts of bemused respect.