There is a thirty-foot pencil on Main Street in Wytheville, Virginia, and it has been there since the early 1960s. It hangs from the Wytheville Office Supply building at 146 West Main Street, painted the signature yellow of a standard number two, with a fine tip that apparently still doesn’t need sharpening. It is impossible to miss and makes no apologies for itself.
The pencil was originally constructed as an advertising gimmick for the Wytheville Office Supply store, conceived by the shop’s original owner, John Campbell. The logic was straightforward: you sell office supplies, you put a giant pencil on your building, people remember you exist. It worked well enough that the pencil outlasted the era that produced it and became something more than an advertisement — a landmark, a photo stop, a reason to slow down on Main Street.
Wytheville Is Worth the Stop
The pencil tends to get the attention, but Wytheville has more going for it than one oversized writing instrument. The town is named after George Wythe, one of the 56 delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence. The Old Wilderness Road to the Cumberland Gap passed through here, and the town is the birthplace of Edith Bolling Wilson, wife of President Woodrow Wilson.
The big pencil is a reminder of the old tourist attractions that existed before interstate highways bypassed historical towns and cities like Wytheville. Before I-77 and I-81 made it easy to pass through without stopping, towns competed for traveler attention with exactly this kind of thing — giant objects, novelty diners, oversized claims. Most of them are gone. This one is still standing, still yellow, still pointing at the sky above Main Street.
It’s free to see, takes about five minutes, and pairs naturally with a stop at Skeeter’s Hot Dogs across the street, a local institution that has been feeding people in Wytheville for over a hundred years. Some detours are worth it on their own terms.
