World’s Largest Spinach Can: The Mystery in Alma, Arkansas
I love a good roadside attraction hunt. You know the drill – you see something listed online as “World’s Largest Whatever,” you add it to your bucket list, you make the pilgrimage. Usually, you find it. Take some photos. Rate the experience. Move on. But the World’s Largest Spinach Can in Alma, Arkansas? That one turned into a mystery.
The Spinach Capital of the World
First, some context: In 1987, two local residents – George Bowles and Wolf Grulkey – decided to put Alma on the map. They proclaimed the town the “Spinach Capital of the World,” and they had legitimate bragging rights to back it up. The Allen Canning Company, Alma’s largest employer, was processing approximately 65% of all canned spinach in the United States at the time.
To celebrate this new identity, Alma went all in. They erected their first Popeye statue in 1987 (a fiberglass and papier-mâché version, later replaced with bronze in 2007), launched their inaugural Spinach Festival, and fully embraced the Popeye branding. Then in 1991, they took it one step further.
The World’s Largest Spinach Can in Alma, Arkansas
The town hired artist William Bland from Fort Smith – who had also painted a Texas water tower to look like a giant golf ball – to transform their water tower into the World’s Largest Can of Spinach. The result was a one-million-gallon water tower painted to look like a massive Popeye-branded spinach can, complete with Popeye’s face on the label, visible from the I-40 and I-49 interchange.
It was perfect. Quirky, proud, very much on-brand for a town that had built its entire identity around spinach.
The World’s Largest Spinach Can in its glory days
And then… it disappeared.
What We Found in 2022 – Not The World’s Largest Spinach Can?
When we rolled into Alma in 2022, we were excited to see this iconic roadside landmark. We found the water tower – it’s located near 758 N Mountain Grove Rd, on a hill near the interstate interchange. But here’s what we actually saw:
Just a regular water tower. Painted solid. No spinach can. No Popeye. Nothing.
The trees around it have grown tall enough over the years that you can barely see it from the road anymore. But even if you could see it clearly, there’d be nothing to see.
The Investigation
Okay, so clearly it got painted over at some point between 1991 and 2022. But when? And more importantly, WHY?
I started asking around.
Google searches:
Tons of old references to it existing. Travel sites still listing it as a destination. But nothing concrete about when or why it was painted over. Just vague phrases like “may have been updated or painted over recently” with no actual dates or explanations.
The local library:
We stopped in hoping librarians would have the town’s institutional memory. Got some vague recollections — yes, it existed; yes, it’s gone now — but no solid timeline or reasoning.
The water treatment facility:
These are the people who actually maintain the water towers. Surely they’d have records of when and why it was repainted, right? They confirmed it’s the right tower but couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) provide specific details about the spinach can era.
The Timeline Mystery
- The spinach can design was definitely present throughout the 1990s
- By the late 2000s, travelers began reporting the paint job was deteriorating — peeling clear coat, fading colors, and patchy green areas
- By around 2010, roadside attraction enthusiasts were already noting that the tower appeared to have been painted over
- The Allen Canning Company filed for bankruptcy in 2013
So it appears the spinach can wasn’t suddenly erased – it was abandoned. The town stopped maintaining it and let it deteriorate over the years. Rather than restore the iconic design, the city eventually repainted the tower to match the rest of Alma’s infrastructure.
The Allen Canning plant had declined and closed (exact date mysteriously undocumented), and with it went the town’s reason for claiming “Spinach Capital of the World.” After the 2013 bankruptcy, the company was sold to Sager Creek in 2014, then to Del Monte in 2015, and finally to McCall Farms in South Carolina in 2017. Today, Popeye Spinach is still on store shelves – but it’s made in South Carolina, not Alma. The town has since rebranded itself as the “Crossroads of America,” actively distancing itself from its spinach past.
The Spinach Festival that started in 1987 ran for about 30 years before quietly ending in 2016.
What Really Bugs Me
Here’s the thing: how does a town’s iconic landmark – a WATER TOWER painted to look like a giant spinach can – just disappear without anyone documenting when or why?
This wasn’t some small roadside oddity. It was a million-gallon water tower painted by a professional artist, part of a decades-long town branding effort. You’d think someone would remember the day they decided to erase their spinach identity. You’d think there’d be city council minutes, news articles, community debate, something.
But it’s like the town collectively decided “we’re not doing spinach anymore” and quietly scrubbed it from existence. No fanfare or explanation. No “RIP World’s Largest Spinach Can” farewell.
The fact that I can’t find basic information about when this happened — from the library, from city workers, from anyone I spoke with — feels almost deliberate. Like Alma wants to forget it ever claimed to be the Spinach Capital of the World.
Still Searching
If you know anything about this – if you saw the spinach can before it was painted over, if you have photos, if you remember when it happened, if you know why the decision was made – please reach out—genuinely invested in solving this mystery at this point.
Because in Alma, Arkansas, there’s a specific water tower — the one near the I-40 and I-49 interchange — that used to be the World’s Largest Can of Spinach. And somebody, somewhere, knows exactly when and why it was painted over.
Visiting the Site
The water tower is still there, located near 758 N Mountain Grove Rd, Alma, Arkansas, near the I-40 and I-49 interchange. You can see it if you look for it, though the surrounding trees have grown tall enough to partially obscure it from the highway.
Alma still has its bronze Popeye statue downtown, which is worth a quick photo stop. And if you’re in the area, you can check it out at Popeye’s Garden (we covered that in a separate post, you can read that here) – we stumbled onto it while searching for the spinach can, and it ended up being the highlight of the visit. Just don’t expect to see a giant spinach can. That ship has sailed. Or rather, that can has been painted over.
Have you seen the World’s Largest Spinach Can before it was painted over? Do you know when or why it disappeared? Drop a comment below – I need to solve this mystery!