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It’s been lighting up Virginia’s sky since 1949
One city in Virginia has its own mountain, and at the top of that mountain sits the world’s largest freestanding illuminated man-made star.
It stands 88.5 feet tall, weighs 10,000 pounds, and every night it switches on above the Roanoke Valley. You can see it from the air 60 miles out.
The story of how it got up there starts with a Christmas promotion that nobody wanted to take down.
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The star was supposed to come down after the holidays
In 1949, the Roanoke Merchants Association paid $28,000 for a giant illuminated star to drive holiday shopping. Roy C. Kinsey and his three sons built it from 2,000 feet of neon tubing bent into three overlapping stars…