Overlooking The Valley

DAYTON - The Green Giant has a hole, a giant hole.

It's squarely in the center of his tunic, which the jolly big guy dons with wreath and leafy boots on the steep hill overlooking the edge of Dayton like the town's own "Hollywood" sign.

Gary Lowe wants to fill the hole and if you're a strapping high schooler, he'll want your help late next month to complete the green tunic on the football field-sized figure, marking the last phase of a project that started almost two decades ago.

"We'll finally be done," said Lowe, an optician and former Green Giant cannery worker who initiated the construction of the current sign in 1992, after the first Jolly GG began to fade and disappear under the weeds. He had help from his friend Wilson Irvine of Sarasota, Florida.

"It will be a real feeling of accomplishment," he said.

But don't count on Lowe, who makes regular trips to Dayton from his home in Texas, sitting still for long.

Once his group has placed the 800 green 8" square pavers inside the giant's mid section, Lowe wants to round up patio lights to illuminate the figure and make it visible at night. He also wants to pursue the creation of a well-indicated turnout off Highway 12, so travelers from both directions can take a moment to admire the jolly man en route.

The Green Giant likeness in the hills, reportedly the largest in the country, has long been a communitysupported emblem of a oncethriving cannery business in Waitsburg and Dayton, and now a bittersweet memory of its past.

Local farmers Bob and Nadine Warren donate the land on which it's laid out and members of the Dayton FFA chapter helped paint the pavers.

In the beginning, he had support from then-Dayton High School principal Van Cummings, whose students placed green cinder blocks to outline the giant. Later, Lowe applied reflective highway paint around the silhouette to make the icon stand out even more.

Now an echo of the past, the Green Giant came to life on the land of the late Henry Krause, using grass seed and fertilizer. It was move 200 feet in 1974 and moved again in 1993, when Lowe and the high school students put 1,200 cement blocks in place to make a figure 300 feet tall and 60 feet wide.

"The Giant is back to overlook his valley," a Dayton newsletter exclaimed at the time. "If enthusiasm gets things done, then Gary Lowe is the person to get the job done."

Lowe, graduated from Dayton High School in 1960 and put himself through college working at the beans, peas and asparagus cannery. He later moved to Belton, Texas, returning every summer to help with local projects and the giant soon became his hallmark effort.

Nadine Dieringer, publisher of the former "Dayton's Main Street & More" newsletter, described the volunteer revival of the Giant in a September 1993 edition.

"My also being a devoted Daytonite and a retiree of Green Giant after working (there) 30 years, I decided to follow the progress of the Green Giant coming to life once again Saturday, Sept. 25, 1993," Dieringer wrote.

It took her a while to track down Lowe on her bicycle that morning. In the plant's parking lot, volunteer cannery workers were ready with their pickups to take "pumus rock bricks" up the hill to the student volunteers via a telephone maintenance road above the Warren home.

But no Lowe, so she beat it to the school, where she also just missed them. Finally, she caught up with the project's crew at the top of the hill overlooking the Touchet Valley and the top of the Giant's future home.

"It was quite a sight," she wrote. "The Giant was outlined with engineering tape, which was the guide to lay the rocks. They started laying rock on the left foot working up part way of the left leg, rock by rock being handed from person to person in the long line of people from the pick up at the top to the bottom of the Giant.

"Then the bottom of the line moved over to the right foot, this pattern of work continuing until the completion of outlining the Giant," Nadine wrote.

The writer left the scene at 10:30 to return a couple of hours later for a progress check.

"When we left, the outline was just above the Giant's feet," she recalled in her article. "I went back about 11:30 am and to my surprise, the outline of the Giant was complete. I could not believe it could have been accomplished in that length of time."

The closure of the Dayton Cannery in 1995 didn't dampen enthusiasm for the Giant, though it made for mixed emotions around the relic, Lowe said.

"It hurt our area's economy," he said about the company's decision to move its remaining asparagus operation to Peru.

But having a sign where it is today was always a natural, Lowe explained.

"Where else can you find such an erect hillside in the Valley of the Green Giant," he asked rhetorically. "We have that here. We have to take advantage of that."

For details about the volunteer Green Giant maintenance effort, contact Gary Lowe at 509-382-2999.