Big Idaho Potato Hotel

The story

In 2012, the Idaho Potato Commission built a six-ton, 28-foot-long, 12-foot-wide monster spud out of steel, plaster, and concrete to mark their 75th anniversary. For seven years, this hollow fake tuber toured 48 states on the back of a flatbed semi trailer to hawk Idaho agricultural pride. On the road, nobody was sleeping inside it—the empty cavity was mostly used to stash promotional T-shirts and plush Spuddy Buddy dolls between stops. When the commission finally commissioned a replacement spud in 2019, the original retired off the highway, and you didn't hear it from us, but its fate was almost a quiet display plot at a museum in Blackfoot.

Instead, Kristie Wolfe—a former spokesperson on the potato tour and a tiny-home builder—convinced the commission to turn over the keys. She hauled the six-ton shell out to 400 acres of working farmland roughly 25 miles southeast of Boise in Orchard, set it down in the field with views stretching toward the Owyhee Mountains, and sprayed eight inches of foam insulation directly onto the interior walls to bury the steel frame and keep the wind out.

What opened in April 2019 is a 336-square-foot studio unit nestled inside fake Russet skin. The clean white interior holds a queen-size bed, an elk-antler chandelier, two pink armchairs, a record player, and a mini fridge. And because fitting plumbing inside a hollow plaster tuber was a logistical nightmare, the bathroom sits just outside in a second converted piece of farm hardware: a corrugated metal grain silo equipped with a bathtub, a shower, and a skylight for stargazing.