Towering Inferno

The L.A. Times visits Baker, the tiny town smack in the middle of the desert -- and best known as home to that huge thermometer you see on the drive to Vegas.

The newspaper recounts the birth of "The World's Largest Thermometer," and how it helped revitalize little Baker. A local businessman, Willis Herron, came up with the idea while working as co-owner of the town's Bun Boy restaurant; the $700,000 landmark was erected in 1991.

Notes the Times: So over the objections of his six children, who pined for a beachside condo, and some locals who fretted that the phallic symbol would sully their hometown, Herron built a thermometer big enough for Paul Bunyan. The idea sprouted from 60 feet to 134 feet after someone brainstormed that it should mark Death Valley's recording of the country's hottest temperature: 134 degrees in 1913.

"People would say Baker was a pit stop. They used that word: pit stop. I resented that," said Herron, 80, who once crowed that his creation would transform the town into Thermometer City.

Baker's biggest competition, International Falls, Minn., nicknamed Icebox of the Nation, dismantled its own thermometer in 2002 after it broke, though its 26-foot Smokey Bear statue remains.

The Baker thermometer's three sides broadcast the current temperature using strings of glowing ovals that climb in 10-degree increments — from 30 to 130 — though rain often hampers its accuracy and bulbs sometimes flame out.