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The Peachoid is the name of a very large water tower in Gaffney, South Carolina, that resembles a peach. The water tower holds one million gallons of water and is located by interstate I-85. An example of folly architecture, the Peachoid is one of the most recognizable landmarks on the part of I-85 connecting Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia.

Usually referred to by passing motorists as "The Peach," this four-story water tank is visible to travelers on I-85 for several miles before getting abreast of it between exits 90 and 92. A very small parking lot and visitor's center is at the base of the sculpture.

The Peachoid was built in 1981 by the Chicago Bridge and Iron Company, of steel and concrete. An overlay stem and leaf were laid across the structure, an enormous "cleft" was created with steel paneling, and Peter Freudenburg, an artist who worked with macro-art, painted the structure to realistically pass for a peach.

The Peachoid was commissioned by the Gaffney Board of Public Works, who had a need for elevated water storage and wished to find a way of building it using federal funding. The shape of the peach was selected because the Gaffney economy was then dependent upon peach orchards, and because the people of the town wanted to make clear that South Carolina, and at one time, Cherokee County (where Gaffney is located) alone, produces more peaches per year than the state of Georgia (known as the "Peach State"). Since its construction, the Peachoid's extremely high visibility has introduced an element of tourism to the local economy, and a smaller (500,000 gallons) peachoid has been built for Clanton, Alabama.

The Peachoid has appeared as an oddity in films in the past. In Lost in America, the travelers stumble across it.

According to rumors, the original construction looked so much like a derriere that the county was forced to add the leaf and point to the bottom of the peach, as the cleft is pointed straight toward the road. Another rumor states that the skin color of the peach had to be darkened, and that any motorists succumbed to wrecks from rubbernecking at the "Gaffney Ass". This story is almost certainly apocryphal, as the leaf was present in the earliest photos of the sculpture and in the construction plans.

External links

• The Peachoid Home Page
• A Peachoid fan's page
• "Peach Water Tower". Ohio Barns. Retrieved September 8. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help) (Contains personal photos and GPS coordinates.)

• Landmarks in South Carolina
• Roadside attractions