There’s a peculiar joy in chasing the absurd, and nothing quite says “weird Americana” like the world’s largest pistachio.
We arrived after hours, the desert light fading fast, the shop long since closed, but there it was—standing in stubborn, glossy green defiance of good taste and reason. A 30-foot-tall pistachio, lit by floodlight, presiding over a roadside empire of nuts and novelty. It looked like something a surrealist might dream up after too much trail mix and not enough water.
A night watchman, clearly accustomed to this kind of pilgrimage, waved us over with a smile that said, Yeah, I get it. He let us snap our pictures. We obliged the moment with exaggerated poses—me saluting the pistachio like it was a general, my brother pretending to scale it like Everest. The desert was quiet otherwise, save for the distant hum of traffic and the rustle of a breeze that carried the smell of warm asphalt and sage.
On the drive to our hotel, headlights cutting through the dark, my brother pulled up the PistachioLand website. In a kind of late-night, neon-fueled e-commerce frenzy, he ordered every item we’d have grabbed had the store been open—honey-roasted, chili-lime, brittle, even pistachio wine, which sounds like a prank but is apparently very real. He said it was only right to pay tribute.
There’s something beautifully silly about the whole experience. The oversized pistachio wasn’t just a photo op. It was a reminder that the road has its own strange poetry. Not everything worth stopping for is on the official map, and not everything that matters happens when the lights are on. Some things—like a giant nut in the middle of the New Mexico night—just exist to make you smile, shake your head, and say, Yeah, I’m glad we didn’t miss that.
World's Largest Pistachio
