Bedford County is home to a nearly century-old, 18-foot giant coffee pot
A few years ago, KDKA traveled west on the Lincoln Highway to bring you a story about the World's Largest Teapot in Chester, West Virginia, a roadside attraction from the 1930s that's still encouraging people to get off the highway and stop along the byway.
But now, we have traveled east down Route 30 and paid a visit to another local landmark that's the pride of its town. The nearly 100-year-old giant coffee pot in Bedford, Pennsylvania, is "steeped" in history.
Brian Butko, the director of publications at the Heinz History Center, has written several books on the Lincoln Highway and the many interesting roadside attractions that have sprung up alongside it. He said there are several names for these, but he calls them "roadside giants."
The Lincoln Highway stretched from coast to coast and is considered to be America's first transcontinental roadway for cars. Butko says that when this coffee pot was built, it was meant to catch your eye as you were driving by so you would stop and spend some money.
"[David] Bert Koontz had a gas station on the West End of Bedford and in 1927 decided to add a café, and that's when he added the coffee pot," Butko said. "At the time, there wasn't actually even an exterior door on the coffee pot. You had to go through his station. What better way to advertise your business then to actually shape the building like what was being sold?"
The coffee pot didn't just sell coffee and food to passing motorists. Over time, it sold other things.
"Eventually it became a bar, over the years, a pretty well-known local establishment around here," said John Holbert, one of the board members at the Bedford County Fair, the organization that maintains the Coffee Pot today.
Holbert says that once the larger highways came in and redirected travelers away from the coffee pot, it fell into disrepair both physically and possibly morally.
"I was told at one time that it was what my grandmother would have called, 'a house of ill repute," Holbert said, laughing. "I don't know whether that is true or not, but that's what I've been told."
True or not, what is factually accurate is that by the late '90s and early 2000s, something had to be done with the old structure that was falling apart.
That's when the Bedford County Fair stepped in and in the middle of a snowstorm in 2004, they had the Coffee Pot moved several hundred yards from its old location to where it sits today at the entrance to the county fairgrounds.
And just how big is this coffee pot? It's about 18 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter, and just for fun, if this were a functional coffee pot, it is estimated that it could hold almost 819,000 8-ounce cups of coffee.
The community has pitched in since the early 2000s to brew a fresh pot or two, so to speak. And while not that long ago, the coffee pot got a new roof and handle, there is once again a fundraiser underway to restore the building's exterior, with structural fixes and some fresh coats of paint.
Bill Hoover, the President of the Bedford County Fair, says that they want this pot to shine for its 100th birthday next year.
"I think Bedford County has a lot of pride, the people that live here, the community," Hoover said. "So, I look back and think, it's unique that someone came up with the idea and it kind of goes along with the history of Bedford County and the town of Bedford with all the history that's behind it. So, it's a good reminder for all of us of where we have come from and who came before us."
If you would like more information on the Bedford Coffee Pot or would like to stop and see it for yourself, its address is 714 W Pitt St, Bedford, PA 15522. And if you would like to donate to its restoration project, checks can be mailed to the Coffee Pot Fund at PO Box 244, Bedford, PA 15522.
