How an overturned concrete mixer became a “NASA space capsule”

Traffic accidents are usually quickly forgotten, especially if there were no casualties, but one from way back in 1959 has left behind a permanent monument and has been turned into a recognizable tourist attraction. It all happened in the US state of Oklahoma, when a traffic accident occurred on the way to the bridge construction site over Lake Oologah. A truck carrying a full tank of concrete overturned on the East 300 Byway between Talala and Winganon.

Concrete “monument”

It took several hours for the tow truck to arrive, and in the meantime all the concrete inside the truck mixer had completely hardened, turning the tank into a massive, immovable block. Workers then judged the mixer too heavy to remove in one piece. The towing service was ultimately able to remove only the cab and undercarriage of the truck, while the mixer tank was left on the side of the road – with plans to remove it later.

That plan never came to fruition, and attempts to bury the object on site also failed, leaving the mixer as a permanent “monument”. During the following decades, the local population developed a kind of attachment to this building, and it became a local landmark and, over time, a tourist attraction.

Now what does NASA have to do with it?

For a long time, the mixer was decorated with American flag motifs, but a key change occurred in 2011, when local artists Barry i Heather Thomas decided to give the building a completely new visual identity on the occasion of their fifth wedding anniversary. Noticing that the blender’s specific shape resembled a spacecraft, the couple transformed the object into a “space capsule,” painting it silver with NASA markings. In order for the illusion to be complete, accessories simulating rocket thrusters were mounted on the lower part of the object.

Today, 66 years after the crash, the “Winganon Space Capsule” is one of the most recognizable photo spots in Northeast Oklahoma. Information about it can be found on official tourist sites and on Google Maps, and passers-by who are not familiar with history often remain convinced that they have come across the real remains of a space mission from the Cold War era.