IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
One of the Inland Empire’s strangest landmarks is about to be brought back to life.
In Baker, the world’s largest thermometer is expected to glow again sometime this summer, three years after it fell into disrepair and went dark, according to a report originally published in The Press-Enterprise.
The 134-foot structure was the creation of Willis Herron, who died in 2007. Herron owned several restaurants and other retail establishments in the High Desert town, and he built the thermometer in 1990 as a way of getting motorists on Interstate 15 to stop.
Herron’s family kept the title on the property where the thermometer is located, and it recently foreclosed on the owner who let the giant fall into disrepair, reportedly because it cost too much to maintain.
Herron’s daughter, LaRae Harguess, an Oak Hills resident, says it will cost about $150,000 to bring the thermometer back to life. A small gift shop at the base of the structure is also being renovated, according to the report.
Like her father, Harguess hope the restored thermometer will persuade people traveling to and from Las Vegas to stop and patronize Baker, which had a population of 735, according to the 2010 census.
