FORTVILLE — Fortville’s iconic pink elephant with a martini in its trunk will be the guest of honor at the town’s Pink Elephant Days next week.

The three-day event, set for Sept. 18-20, is sponsored by Fortville Business Association, a group of merchants devoted to drawing people to local businesses.

The fun kicks off at 11 a.m. Thursday with Ellatini’s Big Move.

Spectators are invited to the Elite Beverages parking lot at 308 W. Broadway St., where the fiberglass statue has sat for decades. There they can watch as a crane hoists the elephant into the air, while the trailer beneath it is replaced with a new one.

Ellatini, as the elephant is called, was named by the community a few years ago.

The sizeable statue with black-rimmed eyeglasses is 12 feet tall and 19 feet wide, roughly the same size as an adult elephant.

It was reportedly brought to Fortville in 1980 by Paul and Betty Dyer, owners of Wagon Wheel Liquors, which later changed hands and became Elite Beverages.

Since then, the eye-catching elephant has drawn curious fans from all over the country.

“We get people stopping by daily, people from literally all over the country that stop and take pictures,” said Ray Cox, who acquired Wagon Wheel Liquors in 2006, and later expanded and renamed the store Elite Beverages.

Cox said when he bought the business, he was happy to inherit the popular elephant in the process.

“There are only a couple other pink elephants in the country, and very few if any have both a martini glass in the trunk and glasses on. It’s pretty unique,” said Cox, a big proponent of Pink Elephant Days.

Three-day lineup

During Ellatini’s Big Move on Thursday, guests are invited to enjoy refreshments from two local businesses — pizza and pink lemonade from Greek’s Pizza and samples of spirits from Moon Drops Distillery — starting at 11 a.m.

Later that night Fortville bartenders will compete to make the best pink drink during Ellatini’s Martini Contest, set at Taxman Brewing Co. from 6-9 p.m.

Tickets to the event are limited, and include martini samples, food and “all things pink” for $50 per person. Attendees are encouraged to dress in pink or safari-style clothes for a best-dressed contest.

On Friday, Elite Beverages will offer more tastings with Moon Drops Distillery from 3-7 p.m., and will have recipes available from the previous night’s martini contest, so customers can grab their own ingredients to make Ellatini-inspired drinks at home.

Throughout the day Friday and Sept. 20, guests are invited to take part in a Main Street Historic Scavenger Hunt, searching for pink elephants, water towers and historical facts hidden around town. Participants can grab a map from participating businesses and enter to win prizes.

From noon to 4 p.m. Sept. 20, Fortville Business Association will host a Main Street Carnival up and down Main Street, with a dunk tank, face painting, balloon animals and sidewalk games, along with live music.

​Also on Saturday, visitors can stop by Elite Beverages for photo ops with Ellatini, along with pink elephant temporary tattoos and free pink lemonade, cotton candy and chocolate for the children. Elite Beverages will again host Moon Drops tastings from 2-6 p.m., and pink elephant merchandise will be available to purchase.

Pink Elephant Days is a new take on Fortville’s fall street festival, formerly known as Visit the Ville.

FBA president Stacy Molander said organizers are excited about the rebrand, which pays tribute to the iconic pink elephant that helped put Fortville on the map.

The goal of Pink Elephant Days is generating traffic to downtown shops while engaging the community and celebrating the spirit of Fortville, said Molander, who owns the Rusted Window home decor and gift shop downtown.

Local legend

Since it came to Fortville in the 1980s, local residents have proudly claimed the whimsical elephant as their own. Curious travelers drive for miles to snap a selfie by it.

The bright pink statue even has a string of raving reviews on Google and Yelp, as well as a mention at roadsideamerica.com, which says the martini-drinking elephant is “worth a detour.”

It’s also listed among Indiana’s top roadside attractions at visitindiana.com, and has graced the cover of “Weird Indiana,” a book documenting the state’s quirky side. It’s also featured on the cover of Greenfield native Ashley Petry’s “Secret Indianapolis: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure.”

The martini in Ellatini’s trunk is said to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the colloquial phrase “seeing pink elephants,” which means a person has over-imbibed in alcohol.

Cox remembers causing a stir the day he transported the statue to a temporary location in 2018, when he was redeveloping the Elite Beverages site and building a much larger store.

“I was towing it down the street to Denver’s Garage, and somebody yelled out the window, ‘Where are you taking the elephant?!’” Cox recalled with a laugh.

The year before that, Cox’s wife and stepdaughter had repainted the elephant a slightly brighter shade of pink, and added more details to its feet and toes.

Cox had been told the pink elephant was stolen in 1973 as part of a high school senior prank, but Brigette Cook Jones, a local historian and executive director of tourism in Hancock County, said stories of the statue ever being stolen are merely folklore.

“She has never been stolen … however, she has been on the move,” Jones said.

The resident elephant has appeared around town in numerous celebrations, like Fortville’s Winter Fest and Bastille Day celebrations.

Popular pachyderm

Jones said the pink elephant’s appeal is an asset for the town. “Each time a picture of the pink elephant is taken, Fortville gets free publicity,” she said.

Prompting people to stop and take a closer look is precisely why fiberglass statutes and other larger-than-life attractions were created in the first place, she said.

“If you are going at a good speed down the road, you will see these large pieces well before you get there,” she said. That’s why Sinclair Gas Stations used to have dinosaurs statues, she added, and why Mr. Bendo, a giant Paul Bunyan-type character, has been used to advertise muffler shops.

“They are great marketing tools,” Jones said.

Given the fact Ellatini is not just a life-size elephant, but a pink elephant sporting glasses and holding a martini, makes it all the more alluring, she said.

“Even Walt Disney included the ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ as the hallucinations that … Dumbo and his friend Timothy the Mouse saw after consuming too much alcohol,” Jones said. “So in a sense, a pink elephant as a mascot for a liquor store would seem to be good advertisement.”

Jones said the Dyers, the former liquor store owners who brought the elephant to Fortville, first saw the statue in front of the Cohron RV Park in nearby Lawrence, where it took up residence while Cohron’s iconic oversize cow statue was being repainted.

“The Dyers thought the giant pink elephant would be a great addition to their liquor store, but were a little unsure about its reception, so they first rented it from Cohron for three months to see how it would be received,” she said. “Needless to say, the pink elephant was a huge success, (and) the Dyers quickly bought him.”

Jones shared a note Patty Dyer wrote about the pink elephant’s early beginnings in Fortville.

“When we got him the glass was red, and there was a red cherry in the glass. One year some kids took his glasses and Paul made new ones,” wrote Dyer, who still lives in Fortville.

“Everyone that has been in Fortville remembers the town because of the elephant. I hope he stays here for many more years,” she said.

Origin story

Jones said Ellatini’s story did not originate in Indiana.

The pink pachyderm got its start in Sparta, Wisconsin, where a couple of companies were making fiberglass elephants in the 1960s, ’70s and ‘80s.

Jones said an article posted to roadsidearchitecture.com shares that Fortville’s elephant was created around 1980 by a designer named Dave Oswald, who at one point worked for Sculptured Advertising.

“Sculptured Advertising had been making large fiberglass elephants since its inception in the 1960s,” Jones said.

The oldest known pink elephant statue is supposedly either one that sits outside a casino in Marquette, Iowa, or one that graces a Shell gas station in DeForest, Wisconsin, both of which were made in 1963.

While it’s unknown exactly where all the pink elephant statutes are today, Jones said Fortville’s elephant has a twin in Springfield, Illinois, complete with thick-rimmed glasses and a martini glass.

“There are several other pink elephants of the same style, but with no eyewear or martinis,” Jones said, “making the pink elephant in Fortville a rare creature indeed.”

For more information on Pink Elephant Days, taking place Sept. 18-20, visit discoverfortville.com.