Pinkie in 2012, with heavily boosted color. Photo: Corey Coyle, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

A gas station needed a way to stand out at a rural interchange, and bought an elephant. Sixty-odd years later, people still pull off the interstate to photograph it.

Pinkie stands beside a Shell station at 4995 County Road V, by exit 126 of I-90/94, about 15 miles north of Madison. The mailing address is DeForest; the spot itself lies in the Town of Vienna, which is why she turns up filed under nearby names. A plaque beside her explains the idea: in the mid-to-late 1960s the owner wanted his station to stand out from the others at the intersection, and a life-size pink elephant in giant eyeglasses did it.

She came from Sculptured Advertising of Sparta, Wisconsin, a fiberglass shop whose pink elephants were roadside bait for gas stations and supper clubs. Accounts trace the line to 1963, outside the Pink Elephant Supper Club in Marquette, Iowa; whether that first elephant is this one, nobody agrees. By the late 1970s the station was an ARCO, one of several in the area with an elephant out front. Pinkie is the last one left. (A tag on her right front leg reads “DWO”, which has left a small question mark over the maker.)

The glasses are the whole personality. Visitors’ lore says they were once sunglasses, swapped later for clear frames, but nothing official records it.

She was repainted in 2014 and is still there, still collecting photographs. The station sells Pinkie magnets, there’s a selfie stand, and trailer parking for anyone towing a camper. One visitor’s advice: buy something before you use the restroom.