Who is the voice of the Paul Bunyan statue at Trees of Mystery, according to This American Life?

The Paul Bunyan statue at Trees of Mystery, a roadside attraction on Highway 101 in Northern California, is voiced by staff working from inside it. The family that runs the park, led by John Thompson, kept insisting to Ira Glass that Paul is real, until an employee named Dave Johnson introduced himself as one of the people who do the voice. Glass was then taken through a door in the statue's shoe and up ladders into the torso, where the operator talks and works the hydraulic levers.

• The statue was built in 1962, stands about five stories high and is paired with Babe, a 36-foot blue ox.
• The operator's room is an 8 to 10 foot oval inside Paul's torso, with old pressure gauges and four levers for the wink and head turn.
• Dave Johnson said it was about 95 degrees up there on the day Glass visited.

▸In their words

“Yeah, that was me. It was hot up there.” Dave Johnson · at 4:30 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on This American Life (2026-10-25). Read the whole episode summary →

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