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The Cardiff Giant

Documented folklore from the Club 49 map, told straight and sourced.

The story

In 1869 workers digging a well on a farm at Cardiff unearthed a ten-foot “petrified man,” and the country lost its head: thousands paid to see the stone giant before it came out that a tobacconist named George Hull had carved it from a block of gypsum and buried it to prank his Bible-literalist kin. When P.T. Barnum could not buy it he built a copy and called THAT the real one, giving us the line about a sucker born every minute. The original still lies on its back at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown.

The ground it haunts

Cardiff, Onondaga County (NY); the giant now rests in Cooperstown. Source: TRUE: a documented 1869 hoax, one of the greatest in American history. The Club 49 map pins this legend at its documented country, beside the real mines, active claims, land status and modeled honey holes of the same ground. Open the free map and go stand in the story.

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