Lake Erie’s Glass Giant

When Lynne Brady and her husband, Larry, bought three acres on Ohio’s Lake Erie shore in 2016, they had never heard of beach glass. A year later, they ended up finding the largest piece of beach glass on record!

After Lynne and Larry bought their lakefront property, some friends asked them if they would be looking for beach glass. Lynne and Larry replied they had no idea what their friends were talking about. When they explained what beach glass was, and Lynne and Larry found some on the beach near their house, they assumed it was something found only on the shores of Lake Erie.

On October 4, 2017, Lynne climbed down the bluff to look for beach glass with her husband. While Lynne was looking for glass, she heard Larry yell, “Come look at this!”

“My first thought was, ‘Geez, leave me alone, I am looking for beach glass,’” Lynne laughs. But when Lynne got over to where Larry was pointing, she saw something that looked like black glass sticking out of the sand. What they saw was just the tip of the iceberg—and below that corner of glass sticking up was the rest of a giant piece of beach glass. The process of getting the giant chunk out was strenuous. “We dug it out and our daughter helped us tie it to the side of the bluff,” Lynne explains.

Next, they had to figure out a way to get the piece up the bluff from the beach. They went to Lowe’s and got supplies and tied the chunk by rope to their Blazer. Lynne drove forward a little at a time while Larry helped guide the massive piece up the bluff. “I would drive 10 feet and run back and yell, ‘You OK?’ while Larry crawled up with it and moved it around trees.” It took two hours, with Lynne continually worrying that Larry might tumble down the 150-foot bluff. “I kept thinking: All this for a piece of glass.”

When Lynne had the piece home, she went online to find out what she had found. The first thing she discovered was that she wasn’t the only one collecting beach glass. “I went on Facebook and saw a group with 15,000 members.” Within a half hour she yelled to Larry, “Beach glass is all over the world!” They were completely surprised to learn that beach glass and sea glass were collected on beaches worldwide.

“We really had no idea. How much glass I missed finding on our travels!” she moans. “Argh!” Slowly Lynne and Larry became educated, learning as much as they could about beach glass, sea glass, and where their giant find might have originated. But, still no luck. The piece weighs 275 pounds and measures about 12 inches high and 64 inches around. The outside of the glass is frosted, as you would expect with beach glass, but the inside, when viewed through a chip on the side, is completely clear.

“We have tried every avenue to find out where it came from. No glass companies along Lake Erie produced such a high quality of crystal-clear glass,” says Lynne. “We have been told it went through an annealing process of 8 to 26 months—if not the lake would have broken it apart.”

Lynne and Larry have shared photos and brought the piece of glass to experts. Several have said it had likely been in the lake approximately 100 years. Shipwreck experts at the Buffalo Beach Glass Festival said that it could have fallen off of a ship many years ago. When Lynne and Larry contacted the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, they said it seemed to have been created for some purpose but had no idea what use the piece would have had.

“They are stumped,” Lynne says. “We have contacted every place suggested to us, but no one has been able to positively identify our find.”

For now, the piece sits in their home on its custom-made stand with color-changing LED lights. It will be on display at the Great Lakes Beach Glass Festival in Erie, Pennsylvania, on May 4-5 this year, if you want to get a look at it in person.

And, if you have any ideas of what this record-holding piece might be, comment below!