Standing 76 feet tall and weighing 43,000 pounds, the Golden Driller is one of the tallest statues in the United States. The shirtless, hard-hatted oil worker stands at the entrance to Expo Square with one hand on his hip and the other resting on a real oil derrick, surveying the city that crude oil built.
He was originally created for the 1953 International Petroleum Exposition and was rebuilt in a permanent version for the 1966 fair. He became Oklahoma's Official State Monument in 2000. Up close, the scale is genuinely surprising — his boots alone are large enough to walk into. The Expo Square complex, where the Tulsa State Fair is held each autumn, surrounds him.