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STORIES FROM IOWA'S PAST
The famous (and infamous) who have had a lasting impact on the state and the world
The Cardiff Giant's time(s) in Iowa
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The Cardiff Giant, one of the greatest hoaxes of all times, was revealed to be a fraud on this day in 1870. Although the giant was “discovered near Cardiff, New York, it was carved out of Iowa gypsum mined from a quarry near Fort Dodge. It was a group of Iowa quarry men and teamsters who helped reveal the hoax by telling investigators what they knew about the affair.
And one tantalizing chapter that is often forgotten in Iowa history is how the Cardiff Giant briefly returned to the state, and how it almost became a part of the collection of artifacts at the Iowa State Historical Museum.
Gardner Cowles, founder of Look Magazine and a scion of the family that published the Des Moines Register, owned the sculpture for several years and kept it in his basement rumpus room where is served as a coffee table. When he tired of it he offered it to the Iowa State Historical Society and then was convinced by officials in New York to donate it to a museum there.
In his self-published – and fascinating – biograpny, “Mike Looks Back,” Cowles says he noticed an item
in Variety in the early 1930s regarding the bankruptcy of a small circus in Texas. One of the show’s assets was a huge stone figure of a man, 2990 pounds, known as the Cardiff Giant. With the help of his Des Moines lawyer, Cowles bought the Cardiff Giant for $4,500 and paid another $1,500 to ship it to Iowa.
Growing up, Cowles says he learned the story of the giant and followed its travels with enthusiasm; he found the opportunity to own it irresistible. The giant was created by George Hull, a tobacco farmer and cigar maker from Binghamton, New York. One evening in 1866, while visiting his sister in Iowa, Hull got into a heated argument with an Iowa minister over a Biblical passage in the book of Genesis, “There were giants in those days.” The minister insisted that the earth was once populated with a race of giant men; Hull, an agnostic, said it simply wasn’t true. Hull became so enraged that he decided to perpetrate an elaborate practical joke. He said later he also thought there might be some money to be made in it.
At a Fort Dodge stone quarry, he purchased a 12-feet-by-four-feet block of gypsum, telling the sellers that it was to be displayed in Washington D.C. at an exhibit of building stones. The huge block was shipped by horse and wagon to the nearest train station in Boone (40 mile into the trip a chunk of the block was removed to make the trip easier). It was shipped to Chicago where it was carved to
resemble Hull. The body was contorted: its knees were drawn up and one hand was placed on the abdomen. A metal hammer was used to simulate skin pores and the sculpture was dipped in acids to give the surface an aged look.
The creation was packed in a crate labeled “finished marble” and shipped on a boat to Buffalo and then hauled by horses to a farm near Cardiff, just south of Syracuse and buried one night by lantern light in a 20-feet hole. Grass was planted over the fresh earth and the giant was forgotten for a year when Hull hired two men to dig a well in the same spot.
When the men unearthed the giant, the news of the petrified man spread quickly. Theories spread about its origins and fundamentalist ministers used it as irrefutable proof that the passage in Genesis was correct.
In the coming days, thousands of people would travel to the farm to view the giant. The farm’s owner, a cousin of Hull’s, charged admission and then moved it to Syracuse, where it attracted even larger crowds.
But soon, people who had seen Hull in Fort Dodge and had been a part of the giant’s transport cam forward. Hull decided it was time to confess everything, much to the embarrassment of religious leaders who had embraced the discovery. The Dean of the Yale School of Divinity was said to be so distraught that he committed suicide.
Surprisingly, the revelation only heightened interest in the giant and it toured the United States. But eventually people tired of the story and it was so and resold until Cowles purchased it and placed it in his den.
In his book, Cowles says that his seven-year-old son and two friends decided one day to smash the giant’s penis with a hammer, and managed to break of the tip. Eventually, he found a craftsman to restore it.
In 1938, H.L. Mencken, the famed author and social critic, wrote asking to come to Des Moines to see the giant. He entertained the Cowles household for a weekend, telling stories and sharing his opinions. As the weekend wound down, he told Cowles that he wanted to exhibit the sculpture at the World’s Fair in New York. Once the fair opened, he would arrange for a similarly sized female giant to be disovered in New Jersey and the two would be reunited at the fair. “We’ll have the biggest love story know to man! I’ll write the publicity, and we’ll have a hell of a time!”
But after returned to Baltimore, Mencken suffered the first of series of strokes that eventually incapacitated him.
When Cowles moved to New York City in 1945 to look after the growing Look Magazine, he offered the giant to the Iowa State Historical Society. But after the president of the New York Historical Society intervened, Cowles decided to give the giant to him. It now is displayed at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York.
The Cardiff Giant