About Chatty Belle
Neillsville has a cow approximately seven times larger than a normal Holstein. Chatty Belle stands about sixteen feet tall and twenty feet long beside the Wisconsin Pavilion, a surviving piece of oversized agricultural showmanship connected to the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
Belle’s career was built around more than size. She was created as a talking cow, with a recorded voice that could tell visitors about dairy farming and the impressive quantities of milk she supposedly produced. The speaking mechanism has not always remained operational, but the enormous fiberglass cow still does most of the necessary communicating without it.
The nearby pavilion was originally constructed for Wisconsin’s exhibition at the 1964 and 1965 World’s Fair in New York before being moved back to the state. The combination of fair architecture, gift shop, dairy promotion, and giant cow has survived as a wonderfully specific roadside stop.
A normal dairy display could explain Wisconsin agriculture with photographs and statistics. Chatty Belle takes the more efficient approach of being a cow so large that nobody driving past can reasonably ignore her.