Are you hungry for a challenge? Do you have the intestinal fortitude and capacity to tackle a 72-ounce steak with all of the fixin's in less than one hour?

Tens of thousands have stopped at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, and tried to consume this monster meal. Since the restaurant opened in 1960, just over three thousand succeeded in finishing it and paid nothing. R.J. "Bob" Lee opened the Big Texan on legendary Route 66 and advertised his restaurant along the busy highway by offering his free meal to anyone who could eat it all. Route 66 opened in 1926 as the major east-west thoroughfare that connected Los Angeles with Chicago.

By the early 1930s, unemployed industrial workers and struggling farmers that lived in the East and Midwest, used the highway as a safe and reliable means to travel west in search of better economic opportunity. The population migration west continued after World War II, and businessmen realized the prospects of opening eating and lodging establishments to salve weary travelers. The interstate highway system of the 1950s replaced the old federal highways, and by the 1970s, Bob Lee moved his business alongside nearby Interstate 40 to attract more potential customers.

Lee opened his new restaurant with Old West décor, a motel adjacent to the property, and relocated the iconic cowboy sign from Route 66 to the new building by helicopter. It still draws the same attention today as it did while on Route 66.