This 35-foot tall, 11-ton fork stands shining in front of an office building in Springfield, Missouri, tines sticking into the ground.

The fork was once a fixture outside a restaurant at 3662 S Glenstone Ave. (now a Prima’s Mexican Grill), but when the restaurant closed down, the firm Noble & Associates relocated it outside their office. The towering eating utensil is worth a drive-by and a quick picture. 

The title of the largest fork is shared between this monument and two others. The first competitor sits over 700 miles away in Creede, Colorado, and has a five-foot lead. The Springfield Fork bears the distinction of being made of stainless steel, a more realistic material for a fork, which gives it a prodigious mass that far eclipses the Creede fork’s 600 lbs. The most recent World’s Largest Fork, twice that distance away, belongs to Fairview, Oregon; the Fairview fork is 37 feet tall but only 2 tons, making it lighter than Springfield’s but shorter than Creede’s. The World Record Academy still recognizes this one as the largest, possibly because the Fairview fork is the only one standing exactly upright. 

Due to this dizzying mix of competing metrics for “largest,” the Springfield fork is given the title of “World’s Largest Fork by Mass” in some navigational apps.