Giant Mystery: Who put Paul Bunyan head atop tree in York, Maine?
YORK, Maine — The fiberglass head of a watchful Paul Bunyan sits atop a weathered tree stump near an empty field on a quiet back road, dutifully looking after the nearby river and the community.
Like many old tales, the history of where this statue was placed first and how it came to rest in its current spot has little documentation and relies heavily on oral accounts, including from family of the property owners, neighbors and giant statue fans. Details are hard to come by and even harder to confirm.
The family of residents David and Sharan Gross, who own about 100 acres where the bodiless statue head is now perched alongside Birch Hill Road near the York River, would like for now to keep the statue's story within their small circle, according to their daughter, Amanda Bouchard, who described the giant head as a benevolent presence.
Bouchard, who spoke on the family's behalf, said revealing the sacred story of how the head ended up on the tree would be like opening up Christmas presents before Christmas.
"It's just not as fun," she said.
Her parents live across from the statue, and Bouchard lives directly next to it.
"We enjoy people seeing him and taking his picture," Bouchard said. "The river is important to us here and 'The Head,' as we call it, has been watching over it."
What's clear today about the giant head is that it sits atop a massive tree trunk along Birch Hill Road near Beech Ridge Road, its face tarnished and partially obscured by a slightly taller 40-foot utility pole a few feet away.
What's less clear is how the head wound up there and what happened to its body.
Remnant of the Muffler Man craze?
The Paul Bunyan head in York looks like it was once part of a whole Muffler Man, a type of large molded fiberglass sculpture popularized 50 years ago.
The manufacturer of such giants, International Fiberglass, stopped producing them around 1974, according to Joel Baker, founder of American Giants, a website that documents muffler men across the U.S. and offers restoration service for giants in disrepair.
"It just really struck a chord with me for some reason," Baker said. "I think everyone thought I was a bit crazy, including the guys that now do all of our restorations."
Baker buys statues or parts of them and makes fiberglass molds of the pieces collected to make repairs and replace missing limbs.
A little over 200 of such Muffler Men remain across the United States and Canada, usually in front of restaurants or garages, Baker said, noting that more of the statues are documented every year.
"We're always finding more giants that we didn't know about that are in somebody's back yard, barn, garage, or who knows where," he said. "The number seems to be growing as we continue to dig."
Baker has studied these giants since 2012 and said Muffler Men were placed as advertising ploys, roadside attractions and conversation starters. Family photo albums are filled with pictures of these statues for a reason, he said. They created a perfect photo opportunity.
"When you were driving in the 60s and 70s and you pulled over for a stop ... there was always a Muffler Man there ... they were built to get the family car to pull off the road and go into the business," Baker said.
In addition to being utilized at car dealerships and various businesses, the Northeast had a heavy concentration of giants used in amusement parks, he said.
In 2018, when Baker visited Watertown, Maine, to pick up a statue for restoration, he took a detour stop to look for the mysterious Paul Bunyan head in York because he "wasn't sure if it actually existed," he said. To his amazement, the head was there, and the tree was a lot taller than he expected.
The very first Paul Bunyan statue was made in 1962 in Lawndale, California, by Bob Prewitt. It eventually found its home at the Paul Bunyan Café on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona. Prewitt sold his business to International Fiberglass the next year, and the giants' popularity peaked in 1966 and 1967, Baker said.
The company created a variety of figures during that time — golfers, cowboys, spacemen, Native Americans, muffler men — all from the one original Paul Bunyan mold, former International Fiberglass President Steve Dashew said in an interview with Roadside America.
By the time the 70s rolled around, production was halted, which led many of the statues to age and become "a community eyesore," Baker said.
Two decades later, however, these giants enjoyed an upswing in public opinion.
"In the late 90s, you start coming into this phase where they're really loved by the town and are local icons," Baker said.
This was spurred, in part, by Roadside America's interactive Muffler Man map, which Baker stumbled upon after a headless dinosaur in Brooksville, Florida, piqued his interest. The map and online database were created in 1996 to document these statues around the country, Baker said.
The founders of Roadside America — Doug Kirby, Ken Smith and Mike Wilkins — began to notice a few of the statues they spotted were holding car mufflers, usually in front of auto-body shops, hence the name "Muffler Men," which was coined in the 1990s by the trio and has stuck ever since, according to their website.
Baker also attributes the growing cult following to a fascination with the bygone era and a desire for people to see objects that bring nostalgic memories to the surface.
York's Paul Bunyan isn't listed on Roadside's map, but a similar statue — a whole one — in Rumford is referenced, and new sightings are added frequently.
Another statue of American folklore's largest lumberjack stands at 31-feet-tall on a stone pedestal in front of the Bangor Civic Center in Bass Park. According to a Roadside America blogpost, the Bangor town clerk's office has Bunyan's "birth certificate" on display.
Author and longtime Mainer Stephen King used the Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor in his novel, "It." The statue came to life on the big screen in the 2019 movie "It Chapter Two," in which the statue, possessed by the evil clown Pennywise, attacks Richie Tozier, according to IMDb.
Full-body statue stolen in well-coordinated heist
If the giant head without a body in York was once part of a full statue, then surely there is or was a giant body without a head somewhere, likely nearby.
The stories passed from one York County generation to the next offer some clues about how the statuary decapitation may have happened.
John Caramihalis of Sanford said his father, John Caramihalis Sr., brought a full-body giant statue — head intact — to their land on Gore Road in Alfred during the 1970s.
"He probably did it for a laugh, knowing my father," he said.
Ann Cutten, daughter of Caramihalis Sr., said hunters would often go into the woods and shoot at the statue.
The family didn't live on the land full-time, but they visited frequently. Because the statue was placed in a discreet part of the wooded property, one would have to walk through the woods to see it, Caramihalis said.
After only three or four years in the possession of the Caramihalis family, one day in the late 70s, the statue disappeared, with no trace left.
Given the fact that John Caramihalis Sr. used a ladder to place the large statue against a tree and wrapped cable around it so it wouldn't fall down, it would have taken time and planning to coordinate the theft, his son said.
The statue "wasn't something that you just put in the back of a pickup truck and drive down the road with," he said.
His father was less concerned with getting the statue back than he was interested to know how people would have the ability to transport it, he added.
At this point, accounts differ about precisely where the statue wound up next.
Caramihalis Sr. told his son that students from Nasson College in Springvale had stolen their Paul Bunyan statue and dumped it near the home of the Dean of Students. Caramihalis Sr., who previously taught physical education at Sanford High School, called his former student Buddy Woodsome to ask for help removing the discarded statue's body, which was now missing its head.
Woodsome, now 73, tells a slightly different tale. He said three of his workers at the time picked up the now-headless statue body the day after it was destroyed by local kids on Halloween night near the York County Superior Court steps in Alfred.
Alfred Historical Committee member Bruce Tucker and local historian Harland Eastman said they have no knowledge of a large statue being destroyed by students near the courthouse steps. Members of the Nasson College Alumni Association could not confirm the alleged events either.
By the time the workers picked up the statue and allegedly dragged it in their pickup truck from the town square to Woodsome Lumber in North Waterboro, about 14 miles away, the severely damaged statue didn't look much like a man any more, Woodsome said.
"I wish I could have fixed it, but I didn't know how," he said.
Headless statue takes on life of its own
The sorry state of the headless statue didn't stop Woodsome from propping the giant up next to a telephone pole at the lumber store. It was a conversation starter, he said, and it remained a towering figure at the North Waterboro business for several years.
Eventually, however, the body deteriorated and was tossed in the dump about 20 years ago, Woodsome said.
The pole where it once rested is now just an unadorned pole.
Baker said the news that a Muffler Man's body was discarded by Woodsome Lumber was terribly sad. The statues are "always fully restorable, no matter the condition," he said.
At the very least, Baker said he takes comfort knowing what happened to the body.
"We enjoy seeing the peeling, faded muffler man as well as the next person ... but eventually, they do fall apart, and you get to a point where we need to save this guy," he said.
Baker said he suspects a connection between the bodiless Paul Bunyan head in York and the headless Paul Bunyan body that once was in North Waterboro, nearly 40 miles away.
And he's not alone.
Head spotted in York more than 40 years ago
Lori-Lee Edstrand Mathews said she, too, suspects a connection between the head in York and body in North Waterboro.
Mathews, now 60, said she and her group of friends were a rowdy bunch in the late 1970s. One day, she rode her horse and met up with her friend Paul Hazzard, who showed her the large statue head near where he grew up on Cider Hill Road in York, she said. They were still attending York High School at the time and the group was very tight knit, she said.
When she first saw the head, Mathews said she was "dying of laughter."
"All I was told was that it was found on the side of the road," she said. "I think there is a lot of people that don't know about the head and a lot more people who don't know the history behind it."
Her boyfriend at the time, Robert Hanson Jr., snapped the photo of Hazzard and Matthews with the head around 1979, she said, which was likely her first glimpse of the object.
Her horse's reaction to the head was, "what the hell is this?" Mathews quipped.
Mathews said she "heard through the grapevine" years later that Hazzard and Kevin Gross were the ones who put the head up in the tree, with the help of Kevin's brother, David Gross.
Bouchard, the daughter of York residents David and Sharan Gross, who own the land where the bodiless statue head is now perched, confirmed that Kevin Gross is her uncle.
The Grosses declined to comment, and Hazzard could not be reached.
Made for mystery?
As Bouchard looked out her window at "The Head" while talking on the phone recently, she noted how scuffed up it had become over the years. The watchful set of eyes over Birch Hill Road will soon be taken down from the tree for revitalization, she said, not unlike the nostalgic giant chasers who brought these statues back to relevance.
Bouchard clarified that she is certain her family didn't steal the statue head.
Even so, anyone who may have stolen this or any other giant statue in the late 70s may rest assured knowing the statute of limitations for theft by the unauthorized taking or transfer in Maine has long passed. According to the Maine criminal code, a prosecution must be commenced within six years after the alleged crime is committed if the property is valued above $1,000 or three years if valued for less.
"I know this story has a mystery around it ... it’s made to be that way," Bouchard said. "People think they know, but they don’t, and it’s fun sometimes to not know."
If you want to come forward and share what you know about the statue's history, or if you have family photos with Muffler Men giants or comments, please email them to yorkweekly@seacoastonline.com.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Paul Bunyan or Muffler Man: Giant decapitated statue in York County ME
