LYONS — Amid the rolling farmland and the country towns below I-16, along the U.S. highway that links Savannah and Columbus, a larger-than-life creation anchored atop the Toombs County courthouse serves as an architecture-meets-agriculture icon of eye-watering proportions.

A 9-foot-wide, 10-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture of an onion — an homage to Georgia’s official state vegetable and this region’s sweet-tasting calling card — has been turning heads for a couple of years now.

In 2022, when officials here in Vidalia onion country were looking for something — a cherry on top, you might say — to make their under-construction government center and courthouse stand out, they turned to a local metalworker and artist.

The metalwork onion now atop the Toombs County courthouse was created by Vidalia artist Ruth English in the metal fabrication shop her father owns. (Courtesy of Ruth English)

The original plan called for a flagpole to adorn the structure’s focal-point dome. Then someone suggested something more ornamental, a finial: an onion. Not unlike one that adorns the amphitheater in the neighboring city of Vidalia.

Ruth English, who built that onion, is the daughter of a metal fabrication shop owner in town. She recalls her father receiving a call asking if his crew was interested in such an elaborate undertaking for the courthouse.

“Do you want to do this onion?” her dad, Clint Williams, asked.

“That sounds amazing,” English said.

Metalwork artist Ruth English says she's proud to have left a creative mark on her hometown with the giant onion she built to adorn the top of the Toombs County courthouse. (Courtesy of Ruth English)

English, 35, majored in art at Georgia Southern University. While there, for a project, she welded together a life-size buffalo. She has since fashioned a metal pig for an area barbecue joint and created a handful of stainless steel onions, although much smaller ones.

Setting a giant onion atop the courthouse presented a challenge.

Because it would be posted on a rooftop, it had to be structurally sound, braced and mounted to withstand the elements.

English chose stainless steel, which she describes as “the prettiest and most pristine metal that you can probably use that’s gonna be weather-resistant.” It also has what she said is “a timeless look.”

Workers install the stainless steel onion sculpture on the roof of Toombs County's courthouse in 2023. (Courtesy of John Jones)

Toombs County Manager John Jones often refers to the dome-top onion, which has become a landmark, as “our Golden Arches.”

Passersby can’t resist snapping photos.

“You take a look and you take another look because you’re not sure you saw what you saw,” Jones said. “It’s doing what we wanted to do, and that was to bring attention to us and celebrate what makes us different from everywhere else.”

English, the artist, refers to the onion, pun intended perhaps, as “very monumental.”

The metalwork onion that adorns the top of the Toombs County Government Center in Lyons is a symbol of the renowned Vidalia onions that grow in the region. (Joe Kovac Jr./AJC)

She is proud, honored even, to leave a creative mark on her hometown.

Sometimes now when she rides through Lyons with her young children, she’ll point out her handiwork, telling them, “You see that thing on top of the courthouse?”

Her famous onion is already standing the test of time. And it has survived savage winds.