Elephant Super Car Wash - Battery St., Seattle, WA
Posted by: 
Hikenutty
N 47° 37.106 W 122° 20.590
10T E 549356 N 5274101
This is the most famous of the Elephant Car Wash signs and can be found a few blocks from the Space Needle in Seattle. The sign has become one of the city's most beloved neon landmarks.
Waymark Code: WM2NJV
Location: Washington, United States
Date Posted: 11/26/2007
Views: 119
Nearly anytime of the day or evening you'll see tourists and locals alike snapping photos of this neon landmark of the city of Seattle. This sign features 380 blinking bulbs and 70 different pieces of neon.
You can see some great shots of the sign on Flickr.com and there are a few videos of the sign in action, including this short flick.
The following history of Elephant Car Wash is from the history page of their Website. It's link is given below.
The first Elephant Car Wash was opened in 1951 on Fourth Avenue and Lander Street in downtown Seattle. This elephant was the first "automatic" car wash - while most car washes relied entirely on plastic bristle brushes and human labor, original Elephant owners Archie, Dean and Eldon Anderson invented hands-free machines that cleaned cars more safely and
reliably. A second location opened in 1956 on Battery Street in the heart of downtown Seattle, another in 1963 in Tacoma, and five more Puget Sound locations (Federal Way, Bellevue, Auburn, Puyallup and Burien) in the years to follow as Elephant's reputation for quality service spread and grew. Elephant car washes now exist in Eastern Washington, Arkansas and California.