Tiny Kansas town wants to boost tourism by creating the world’s largest teapot
The big ball of twine in Cawker City. The giant Van Gogh painting in Goodland. The Big Brutus electric shovel in West Mineral.
All are included on an elite list of quirky roadside attractions in Kansas that are famous for being unusually large. And all reside in Kansas towns that are unusually small.
Now, a small town near Wichita is attempting to join that list, and it has until 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31, to raise enough money to pull it off.
The community foundation in Belle Plaine, a town of around 1,450 that’s 26 miles south of Wichita, is brewing a plan to bring down the town’s 112-year-old water tower — the closest thing the town has ever had to a skyscraper — and turn it into something a bit more ornamental.
Something that will draw tourists.
Something that will put Belle Plaine on the map.
They want to turn the tower’s 50,000-gallon cone-style tank into a teapot. Perhaps the world’s largest teapot.
Their plan, which the city council agreed to support but not pay for, is to bring the teapot-shaped tower down, give it a giant handle and spout, paint it to look like a teapot, then put it back where it’s always been: in the city park in the center of town.
Then they’ll wait for the people who want to see Kansas’ latest quirky tourist attraction to start pouring in.
“The big thing is we want to save our water tower and not have it scrapped,” said Julie Gooch, the chair of the Belle Plaine Community Foundation. “And this is one avenue we can do it, which will also promote tourism and will help our local businesses.”
If all goes to plan, Gooch said, the water tower-turned teapot — which her research shows would be larger than all other towers turned teapots in the country — could be completed within a year.
But first, she said, the project’s backers need to raise more money. The foundation has secured a grant from The Patterson Family Foundation, a Kansas City-based group that helps rural communities.
The foundation has been awarded a matching grant good for up to $100,000: If the community can raise $100,000, the grant would provide another $100,000, and the foundation would be able to sweeten the pot for Belle Plaine — and perhaps calm the few but vocal teapot opponents who say that a giant teapot is a silly waste of money.
The first $80,000 of the $200,000 would be earmarked for the teapot project, Gooch said. The rest would be used for Belle Plaine community improvement projects, meaning that potentially everyone could get what they want.
“I don’t expect everybody to agree with the project,” Gooch said. “But the one thing the community does believe in is that they do love their town. They do want what’s best. They want to see improvements. And this project is a win-win for businesses, the community and for the Belle Plaine Community Foundation.”
World’s largest teapot
The 113-foot-tall water tower, whose tank is estimated to be about 32 feet wide and 22 feet tall, has been serving Belle Plaine since 1913, city records show.
But in 2022, Belle Plaine was notified that the nitrate levels in its water supply were too high, and the city council voted to build a water treatment plant that would include a new 300,000-gallon water tower. That project, estimated to cost $11.7 million, is being built on 14.4 acres of land east of Belle Plaine and is nearing completion.
The city planned to scrap the old water tower once the new one was up. But then the community foundation was presented with an idea: A few cities around the United States have, over the years, turned their old water towers into giant teapots or coffee pots and then had success luring tourists. One of them is Stanton, Iowa.
In 1971, the small town in the southwest part of the state turned its still-functioning water tower into a coffee pot as an ode to Virginia Christine, a Stanton native who appeared as Swedish “Mrs. Olson” in 1960s and ’70s Folgers’ TV commercials.
The city added a handle, a spout and a top knob to its tower and painted it with a Swedish design. It’s now referred to as the “World’s Largest Swedish Coffee Pot.”
The tower eventually became a safety hazard. To save it, the town lowered and relocated the giant coffee pot in 2015, and people still travel to see it. Other giant towers-turned-pots can be found in Lindstrom, Minnesota and in Kingsburg, California.
A local suggested that Belle Plaine could turn its water tower into a teapot, too, Gooch said. Eventually, the idea made it to the Belle Plaine Community Foundation, whose board liked the idea and started researching what it would take.
In early July, Gooch said, she presented her plan to the Belle Plaine City Council, whose members were amenable. The big teapot could be big draw for Belle Plaine, she told the council, and if her research was correct, Belle Plaine would be able to say it was home to the world’s largest teapot: The tallest one out there is 15 feet tall, Gooch said, and the Belle Plaine tower is at least 20.
Still, not everyone in Belle Plaine loved the idea, Gooch said. She found out earlier this month when negative comments started to appear on social media. Some people wondered what a teapot had to do with Belle Plaine. Some said they had better ideas for how to spend $80,000 in the community, like on a splash pad, a new playground or new pickleball courts.
Rumors started swirling that the foundation planned to spend the full $200,000 on the teapot project and that the foundation planned to install the finished piece at the Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine instead of at the city park.
Gooch said she’s tried to dispel those rumors and has spent time explaining the benefits of the foundation’s plans to those who oppose them.
They’d earmark $80,000 for the teapot project, and they’d set aside $70,000 to be used as seed money for future Belle Plaine community improvement projects, like a splash pad, potentially. The remaining $50,000 would be put into an unrestricted endowment — one requirement that comes with the grant — and it would also be used for community improvement projects.
So far, the foundation has raised $30,000. But it needs to get that number up to at least $50,000. It has until 5 p.m. on Oct. 31.
Stacy Davis, a community foundation board member who works as the executive director of the Sumner County Economic Development Commission, said that the project is visionary. Tourism is up since COVID, and there’s no reason Belle Plaine shouldn’t benefit.
”By taking this historic water tower and turning it into a tourist attraction, you are getting people that are going, ‘Well, let’s go see the world’s largest teapot. Let’s go see what Belle Plaine has to offer us,’ ” she said. “And they’re going to eat at our restaurants. They’re going to buy gas at our gas stations. They’re going to visit other retail establishments here. So overall it’s an entire community-wide impact. Yes, it impacts Bell Plaine, but then it also impacts the rest of Sumner County.”
Here is my handle...
Gooch loves the teapot idea, she said. But she also hates the idea of Belle Plaine’s historic water tower meeting its end at a scrapyard.
When she was a small child, her family lived in Wyoming, but they’d sometimes drive to visit her grandmother, whose house was very near the base of the water tower. Gooch remembers that she’d always know she was almost to Grandma’s when she spotted that old water tower.
To me it represents home,” said Gooch, who has lived in Belle Plaine since she was a fifth-grader. “I would like it to be something instead of scrapped.”
Once the tower is brought down, it will stay closer to ground level like the one in Stanton, Iowa: It’s not safe to put it back up into the air without water inside weighing it down, Gooch said.
The foundation would hire someone to craft a handle and a spout and attach it to the tower. They would construct some kind of stand to hold it in place. And they’d hire an artist to paint it.
The foundation hasn’t settled on a design yet, Gooch said, but its members have heard from many locals who’d like it to keep its current chocolate-and-gold motif to match the high school’s colors. One proposed design includes the high school’s dragon mascot blowing flames onto the bottom of the pot. Once it raises the money and gets the tower down, Gooch said, the foundation will start asking the community for input on the teapot’s design.
The foundation’s members also have decided that the giant teapot’s spigot will point into the park. Some have mentioned that it would be fun if water could pour out of the pot onto a future splash pad in the park. Gooch said she has no idea if that’s even feasible, but if they find out it is, they want the spout to be pointed in the right direction.
Gooch said she’s been trying to reach out to each person in town who’s expressed opposition to the idea, including some who didn’t hate the idea of saving the tower but thought it should become a giant watering can instead.
The teapot is just so marketable, Gooch said, and she can already imagine the punny slogans. Belle Plaine is brewing a plan. It’s steeped in history. It’s spilling the tea.
“The other thing a teapot represents is hospitality and welcoming,” Gooch said. “When someone comes to your house, what do you offer them? A drink. So what better hospitality piece than having a teapot that basically represents, ‘Welcome to our town. Let’s have a drink together?’ ”
To donate to the teapot project, follow the QR code at the bottom of this story or mail a check payable to Legacy Foundation with memo BPCF to Belle Plaine Community Foundation, P.O. Box 285, Belle Plaine, KS 67013
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 5:07 AM.
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