Salem Sue, World's Largest Holstein Cow

New Salem was settled in the 1880s by homesteaders, many of them German and German-Russian immigrants who came to farm the central North Dakota prairie. The land here proved better suited to dairy and mixed farming than to wheat alone, and for decades the creameries and milk cows of the surrounding countryside were the backbone of the town's economy.

By the early 1970s the local Lions Club wanted a way to celebrate that heritage and to give travelers a reason to slow down and remember New Salem. They settled on a giant Holstein, the black-and-white breed that fills the region's dairy barns, and raised the funds themselves. Salem Sue was assembled on School Hill in 1974, and she has greeted the interstate ever since, a hometown symbol built by the people she honors.

The real reward of the drive up is not just the cow but the vantage point she commands. School Hill is one of the higher rises in the area, and from beside Salem Sue the land falls away in every direction, a patchwork of grain fields, pasture, farmsteads, and the thin ribbon of the interstate running east toward Bismarck and west toward the Badlands.

On a clear day the horizon seems to go on without end, the way it does across so much of the northern plains. It is a good place to feel the scale of the country you are crossing, to stretch after a long stretch behind the wheel, and to watch the light move over the fields. Sunrise and sunset are especially fine, when the low sun gilds both the statue and the farmland below.

Salem Sue belongs to a beloved tradition of oversized roadside monuments strung across North Dakota, part of an informal trail that includes the World's Largest Buffalo in Jamestown, the World's Largest Sandhill Crane in Steele, the Tin Family and other sculptures along the Enchanted Highway, and the giant turtles up in the Turtle Mountains. Each was built by a community wanting to give travelers a reason to stop.

These giants are more than kitsch. They are folk art on a grand scale, funded by local clubs and volunteers, and each one says something about the place that raised it, whether it is the bison herds that once covered the plains, the cranes that pass through on migration, or, here, the dairy cows that built a town. Together they turn a long interstate crossing into a scavenger hunt of local pride.

The land Salem Sue overlooks has been home to Northern Plains peoples for thousands of years, and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, now the MHA Nation, along with the Dakota and Lakota, hold deep ties to the Missouri River country just to the east. Their villages, trails, and history are woven through this stretch of the state, and the nearby Bismarck-Mandan area holds many of the sites that tell that story.

For the traveler today, New Salem makes an easy pause on the drive between Bismarck and the Badlands. The town itself is small and welcoming, with fuel and food along the interstate, and the surrounding countryside carries the quiet rhythm of a working farm community. It is a fitting neighborhood for a monument built to honor the people who farm it.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.