Paul Bunyan and Babe

Real logging-camp oral folklore, later commercialised in 1916

Before the advertising men got hold of him, Paul Bunyan lived in the bunkhouses of the northwoods logging camps, in tall tales the lumberjacks told each other through the long winters, the man so big he dug the Great Lakes to water his blue ox and dragged his axe to make the Grand Canyon. He was written down and commercialised in 1916 by a timber company copywriter, which is where the modern version comes from. Bemidji built him in 1937, and those statues on the lakeshore are among the oldest roadside giants in America.