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Hampton Hotels Volunteers Restore World's Largest Cuckoo Clock

Volunteers from Akron-area Hampton Hotels were out in force last week to restore the World's Largest Cuckoo Clock. The 23-foot-tall time-structure was built in the late-1960s to attract customers to a restaurant on Route 62 deep in Ohio Amish country.

The current owner, Lee Ann Miller of Grandma's Homestead, told The Canton Repository that the clock's Bavarian music had been off key and that many of its features -- dancing figurines, a water wheel -- had deteriorated.

The clock is the latest landmark in Hampton's Save a Landmark campaign. In addition to the clock, the initiative has also restored the world's largest buffalo, in Jamestown, North Dakota, and the world's largest teapot in Chester, West Virginia.

The campaign is not all roadside kitsch. It also helped restore Tybee Island Lighthouse, in Tybee Island, Georgia, and the One-Room Schoolhouse in Northville, Minnesota.

Hampton is donating $20,000 and an estimated 80 hours of volunteer time to the cuckoo clock project, which will include moving the clock to ground level from the roof. The clock is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest cuckoo clock. Some clockowners dispute that. The clock is the Hampton Hotels' Save a Landmark's 32nd project. They are aiming to have one in each state.

You can nominate a landmark here. In addition to saving known landmarks, Hampton also runs a Lost Landmarks campaign, an effort to locate long-gone pop-culture items such as Elvis' first guitar and a tiki statue that was used as a prop in a Brady Bunch episode.

Related Stories:
· Finally the Truth: Bigger IS Better [HotelChatter]
· Cuckoo for Restoring Time [The Canton Repository]