In most ways, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, is no different from a string of other small towns set along the eastern Ohio River. It’s a town of four thousand in a county where nineteen percent of the residents live below the poverty line. Most of the rest are employed by coal companies or chemical manufacturing plants.
On my first visit to the town a few years ago, I ran into Charles Humphreys of the Mason County Development Authority, who just happened to stroll up as I checked out a poster for a Neil Diamond cover band on the window of The Lowe Hotel. As we talked, nobody walked past us. No passersby wandered downtown or went into the historic hotel or the old theatre or the McDonald’s. But several people, some with out-of-state plates, drove up to a hulking, steel statue, planted on a traffic median on the main street. They wanted to take a picture. “Seven, ten people a day will take a picture with that statue,” Humphreys told me. “People drive into town just to see it.”
The statue is a large, silver creature with tattered wings, claws, and glowing red eyes. Its arms are wide, embracing nothing, and its mouth hangs open, full of long, sharp teeth. It looks out of place amid the empty storefronts and dusty sidewalks. It looks like it wants to eat the town. Sculpted by artist Bob Roach, the statue was unveiled in 2003 and has become the biggest tourist attraction in Point Pleasant: a statue to commemorate a legend and the town’s claim to fame, the monster who tried to save them.
Source: The Awl
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