History

In the spring of 1975, the Ordell Bicentennial Improvements Committee held $9,700 in matched municipal and county funds and faced a July 1976 deadline. The minutes record the field of proposals narrowing quickly: a bandshell was priced out at nearly double the budget, a commemorative mural failed for want of a suitable wall, and a fountain was set aside over water-table concerns raised by the county engineer. At the fourth meeting, a committee member observed that the region's most dependable manufactured object was the corrugated culvert, and moved that Ordell install 'a culvert of national significance.' The motion carried 5–2.

The culvert itself — nine feet in diameter, 66 feet long, galvanized, and classified by the mill as factory seconds owing to a cosmetic blemish the committee could not locate — was purchased from Dakota Corrugated Products for $6,340 including freight. The chosen site, selected for visibility from the county road, was the highest point in the township, which presented the difficulty that there was nothing to drain and no grade to drain it along. The solution was a purpose-built earthen berm through which the culvert passes level. A letter from the consulting engineering firm, kept on file at the town office, certifies that the installation 'serves no hydraulic function and is unlikely ever to.'

The dedication was held July 3, 1976. A ribbon was run through the culvert and cut at both ends simultaneously, a logistical feat the committee rehearsed twice. The remaining funds purchased the bronze plaque, sod, and a smaller upright culvert section that serves to this day as the donation receptacle. Attendance was estimated at four hundred, which remains the largest recorded gathering in Ordell for any purpose.

The site's principal setback came in 1981, when a spring storm eroded the west shoulder of the berm and left six feet of culvert cantilevered over open air. Repairs — regrading, new sod, and a buried retaining course — cost $2,900 and were paid from a memorial fund and a pancake supper. The culvert itself required no work. The committee's successor body, the Culvert Stewardship Board, notes in its standing report that the structure has 'performed as intended continuously since installation,' the intention being to sit there.

In 1988 the 'World's Largest Decorative' designation was challenged by an Ohio pipe distributor whose display culvert measured four feet longer. The Board's response, drafted over two meetings, held that a culvert attached to salable inventory is commercial signage, not decoration, and the challenge was withdrawn after an exchange of letters described by both parties as civil. The interior was painted sky blue by the school's FFA chapter in 1996 and is retouched as needed.

Local Legends

Residents maintain the culvert amplifies the sound of approaching weather, and some older farmers stand in it to 'hear the west.' The county emergency manager has stated on the record that the culvert offers no meteorological advantage and should not be occupied during storms.

It is said that water has passed through the culvert only once, in 1997, carried there in buckets by persons unknown. The Stewardship Board classifies the incident as vandalism, while conceding that nothing was damaged and the culvert 'handled it well.'

Some residents claim the culvert sits three degrees off its surveyed alignment so that the sunset shows through it on the committee chairman's birthday. Surviving members call this 'a coincidence we let stand.'

The Controversy

The culvert was purchased from a firm whose regional distributor was the brother-in-law of the committee treasurer, a fact raised at a 1977 town meeting. A review conducted by the county auditor's office found the price 'fair to favorable' and closed the matter in a single page. No finding of impropriety was made, no apology was offered or requested, and the two families have sat on opposite sides of the potluck at every Culvert Days since.

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