Over the years, the two best-known nicknames for Tulsa have had to do with petroleum: the Oil Capital of the World and the Magic Empire – the latter allegedly bestowed by the famous American General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing to reflect his perception of the city as an oil boomtown.
There’s another one making the rounds these days: Land of the Giants. And if it takes hold, it’ll be in great part because of the entrepreneur and businessperson Mary Beth Babcock. Back in 2019, she was responsible for bringing the 21-foot-tall statue of a space cowboy she named Buck Atom to Tulsa and getting it placed beside her Route 66 shop, Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios, where it has since stood, a true example of a genuine roadside attraction.
Buck Atom was the first giant to land here; he was not the last. These days, four more of them adorn sections of the old Mother Road, ready to be discovered, visited, and photographed by local sightseers as well as by the increasing number of travelers rolling down the nostalgic highway during its centennial year.
If you’re from northeastern Oklahoma, you probably remember Babcock’s former store, Dwelling Spaces. Located on a corner in downtown Tulsa, it was around for a decade, offering all kinds of items, from clothing to books to music, with a big emphasis on material from local creators. In 2016, Dwelling Spaces closed its doors, and, for a year or so, Babcock applied herself to various retail and other jobs.
Then came an epiphany, helped along by either an amazing coincidence or some sort of cosmic synchronicity.
“I woke up one day and I said to myself, ‘What is it that you really want to do?’” she recalls. “I’d made things happen before, and I was confident enough in myself to think that if I went after what I really wanted, I could make it work. So I thought, ‘What is it? What do I want?’ And the answer was that I wanted to do retail, but something small.”
Just about a half-hour later, as she recalls it, she was looking at Facebook and ran onto a picture of a building in Tulsa that had, in the 1950s, housed a PEMCO filling station. “Immediately, when I saw it, I said, ‘That’s it! I want a souvenir shop, in a gas station, on Route 66.’ It couldn’t have been more perfect. I asked, and there it was.”
And she did indeed make it work. But from the beginning, she felt that the place needed a mascot, something to draw the attention of passersby.
“When I was at Dwelling Spaces, I had an artist named Jeremy Luther create a character for the shop, an outer-space cowboy,” she says. “For a while he just lived in my computer, and then when the [PEMCO building] spot became available, I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, I can bring that space cowboy to life.’ He had to have a name, so ‘Buck’ was for the cowboy side and ‘Atom’ for the space side. I knew that a character like that could be so much fun to work with – to come up with a story for him and create merchandise.
“At that time, I had no clue he would become a 21-foot-tall roadside attraction,” she adds. “But once I got open, got the logo, got the merchandise in – well, I knew I needed some kind of attraction, because I was on historic Route 66.”
Although she didn’t quite connect it at the time, she remembered a long-ago visit to another Mother Road business – the Pops Soda Ranch in Arcadia, with its 66-foot soda-bottle sculpture out front.
“I thought then, ‘Man, this is so brilliant. It’s a new Route 66 attraction. The road’s been around for a lot of years, but this is new.’”
She also recalled a giant figure that had graced the city of Enid, her dad’s hometown, before moving down the road about 40 miles, where it towered over a business called Bud’s Salvage. Crafted to resemble the legendary strongman Paul Bunyan, axe in hand, it had been created from the mold of what fiberglass-statue aficionados know as the Muffler Man. Originally made in the ’60s for Phillips 66 gas stations, these figures had become iconic pieces of American pop culture.
Unfortunately, when Babcock’s brother David made a call to the salvage yard, it was no deal. The Bunyanesque figure was, Babcock recalls, “bringing too much traffic into their business.”
Then, one day, she was talking to Rhys Martin, president of the Route 66 Association, about the whole roadside-attraction idea. He put her onto a man in Illinois named Joel Baker – “the guru of all the giants,” she says – and he, in turn, introduced her to Mark Cline of Natural Bridge, Virginia, who had a mold available of the original Muffler Man. Sure, he could make one to her space-cowboy specifications. And in May of 2019 – following a significant amount of fundraising on Babcock’s part – the giant Buck Atom took his place on the Mother Road.
Muffler Men weren’t the only giant-sized fiberglass figures to come out of the ’60s. There were also what are known as Uniroyal Gals, originally created for the tire manufacturer. Since it only seemed logical to Babcock that Buck should have a female counterpart, Stella Atom arrived from Virginia a few years later to take her place on America’s Main Street.
“I got to design her, and she was like a giant paper doll for me,” says Babcock. “I wanted to throw in some memory of my mom, and every time I see a yellow butterfly I think of her, so there are yellow butterflies on Stella’s boots.”
Stella Atom arrived in town in June of 2024. Since then, Babcock’s retail outlets have expanded down the Mother Road to Tulsa’s old Meadow Gold Building, which houses some 66 local artists and their work, as well as the former Hardesty Press building across the street, where she now runs a store called Buck’s Vintage. And, as all this was going on, up went more statues: Meadow Gold Mack, Cowboy Bob and Rosie the Riveter. The latter, she says, was created in honor of Tulsa developer, Meadow Gold District Association member, and statue supporter Aaron Meek, whose mother was an actual “Rosie the Riveter” factory worker during World War II.
And, while the statues were all overseen by Mark Cline and shipped to her from Virginia, Babcock has made sure they also reflect local artistry. Such accoutrements as Stella’s ray gun, jet pack and bracelet and the rocket Buck holds, for instance, were done by Tulsa-area creators.
Babcock laughs when asked if more big statues could be on the way to the Land of the Giants.
“Ooh, that is yet to be seen,” she says. “But I’ve seen the magic that Buck brings, the people taking pictures with him, making memories with their families. Of course, back in the day these statues were made to reel people into your shop and, yes, people do come into the shop and want to buy a little souvenir. But I didn’t even know what I wanted when I started this. I just know that what the statues are doing now is filling my heart. And what’s beautiful is that they’re not only helping me, but they’re helping my neighbors. They’re helping the city. They’re helping the state. I just met with [the tourism and convention bureau] Visit Tulsa, and they want to talk about using Rosie and Stella for a women’s program. So it’s neat how they’re influencing people and getting them to be creative.
“You know,” she adds, “people over the past couple of years have been saying to me, ‘What are you doing for the [Route 66] centennial?’ And so I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to make more giants, create more experiences for people traveling Route 66.’ That was actually another motivation. I just thought, ‘Why not?’”
