This kitschy monument has been promoting Georgia’s largest cash crop to passersby on I-75 for nearly forty years. Designed by A. R. Smith, Jr., it was sponsored by the Georgia Peanut Commission as a tribute to the peanut industry and as a memorial to Nora Lawrence Smith, longtime editor and publisher of The Wiregrass Farmer. And while there are other monuments to America’s favorite legume scattered around the country, this one is the largest. At least that’s what the folks in Ashburn tell me.
The peanut was toppled during Hurricane Michael on 10 October 2018.
