So you're sitting in the football stadium at the University of Texas at Austin.

All around you, a hundred thousand people are clapping, cheering, stomping their feet.

Suddenly the marching band swarms onto the field decked out in these bright orange costumes

with tassels and cowboy hats.

Everything looks teeny tiny from this distance.

Everything except for one thing.

She's about eight feet wide, around 500 pounds.

In her history, it takes her all the way from the stockyards of Chicago to a nuclear

test during the Manhattan Project to this stadium, right here at the University of Texas at

Austin.

I'm Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places.

And today we're bringing you the story of the sweetheart of the longhorn band.

We'll talk to you later after this.

Clifton Crooms says that there's one thing people always ask him when they first lay

eyes on Big Bertha.

People are always like, you know, well, can I hit it?

You know, when I got hired, I said the exact same thing.

Crooms is the director of the longhorn band.

And his answer to that question is usually, no, no, you cannot hit Big Bertha.

And unless you want to join the marching band, because Big Bertha is a drum, a really,

really big drum.

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