Former World's Largest Cherry Pie Pan

A giant concrete slice of cherry pie sits in a giant pie pan in Charlevoix, Michigan. In front of it handmade wood letters sticking out of the ground spell out “World’s Largest Cherry Pie.” About 50 miles south, in Traverse City, another giant pie pan sits next to a sign that boasts “Guinness Book of World Records… Largest Cherry Pie.” Both towns claim their own truth.

Charlevoix says Traverse City’s cherry pie didn’t have a bottom crust, and was therefore null. Traverse City says its pie was bigger, plain and simple. But neither of the pies were as big as the cherry pie made in Oliver, British Columbia, in 1992.

In 1976 Dave Phillips was so ecstatic about America’s bicentennial celebration that he talked several local businesses around Charlevoix into helping make the world’s biggest cherry pie. After building a big enough pie pan, and an oven large enough for it, the town successfully made a 17,420-pound cherry pie during the its annual cherry festival. About 7,000 people were served somewhere around 10,000 slices of record-breaking pie.

The pie held onto the record for just over 10 years. Then, in 1987, the citizens of Traverse City, who had all the cherry trees anyway (there are almost none in Charlevoix), made a larger cherry pie that weighed in at 28,350 pounds.

In 1992 a Canadian bakery made a cherry pie that weighed 37,740 pounds, but they didn’t save the pie pan. So, all speculation aside, the world’s biggest cherry pie pan sits in Traverse City, Michigan, 50 miles from the world’s second biggest pie pan.