Meet The Famous Tommy Turtle
Bottineau is a cluster of tree-lined streets and stores nestled around a railroad track. It's an aberration in the surrounding perfect grid of county roads and Great Plains flatness that extends to the horizon and beyond. It's only a few miles south of the Canadian border. And it's the home of Tommy Turtle.
Tommy Turtle is 30 feet tall. He is the Largest Turtle in the World and he straddles the Largest Snowmobile in the World, which is even larger -- 34 feet long. He guards the entrance to Bottineau's municipal tennis courts. He weighs three tons.
Tommy was built by an Idaho man named Boots Reynolds in 1978 and moved here on a couple of flatbed trucks.