Moab can now boast a new claim to fame – it’s the site where a new Guinness World Record was set for launching a pumpkin the longest distance.

Two-time world champion pumpkin shooters, the “Big 10 Inch” Air Cannon team, took their record-breaking shot late Sunday at the Old Airport runway south of Moab. Shooting a beer-christened La Estrella – a tropical pumpkin variety – some 4,623 feet at a speed estimated at more than 700 miles per hour, the Big 10 Inch team successfully topped the previous Guinness distance record of 4,491 feet, set in 1998.

The shot followed an unsuccessful series of attempts to set the new record on Saturday, Oct. 31, during the Youth Garden Project’s annual Moab Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival. On Saturday, the team attempted to break the record using a variety of vegetables, including white casper pumpkins and Green River melons. But they settled on the La Estrella gourd for their final and record-setting attempt on Sunday because of its smoothness and its almost perfectly round shape, team members said.

The record-setting event was witnessed by Grand Junction, Colo. surveyor, Chris Ransier, and awaits final verification from Guinness World Records.

“We’ve been working for 10 years for this moment, and second place doesn’t cut it. There’s just as much satisfaction when you look in the mirror and know that you did it as having Guinness acknowledge that we did it,” said Ralph Eschborn II, co-captain of the Big 10 Inch team. “But we appreciate the fact that Guinness requires a lot of documentation so that when we get it, we know we’ve gotten the record officially, and any challenger will have to beat us fair and square!”

Five of the eight-person Big 10 Inch team, whose members range in age from 23 to 66 years old, traveled more than 2,000 miles to Moab from the Delaware Valley to take advantage of the high altitude and attempt the record. 

According to Jen Sadoff, Youth Garden Project’s executive director, an estimated 2,000 people showed up to watch pumpkins, watermelons and jugs of water launched from a variety of machines during the festival on Halloween day at the runway south of town. The runway was packed with people in their Halloween costumes, children and adults. Even the dogs were dressed for the occasion. Along with the main event of pumpkin launching, attendees participated in a variety of other activities, including contests, crafts, chicken bingo, and wiener dog races. The straw bale maze and giant sand box were big hits with the younger festival-goers.

This year’s competition brought 12 different pumpkin launching teams to the regular competition. Though many of the teams decided to enter the competition just for the fun or the challenge, several of the teams were comprised of physics students from the College of Eastern Utah in Price.

Due to the complex nature of building a working trebuchet and then finding the proper weight and angle to achieve maximum performance, the students were given class credit for participating in the competition.

Many of the teams had only tested their machines a handful of times before showing up Saturday morning. However, according to Justin Bracket of Price, Utah, his team, The Lumberjacks, had not tested their trebuchet at all.

“We used computer simulations and YouTube videos [to get an idea how the design would work],” he said Saturday morning as his team prepped for their first launch. The team’s tactics seemed to pay off as their first pumpkin sailed 329 feet.

Though the crowd was hoping for distance, teams were judged on several other factors as well. Each team was awarded points for distance and accuracy during their three competition launches. They were also awarded points for the design of their machine, a team presentation to the judges and sportsmanship. When the points were added up, the WabiSabi Pumpkin Pirates were named the festival’s pumpkin chuckin’ winners again this year. They not only had the farthest launch, at 350 feet, they also garnered the most points in the other categories. The second place team, the Bluff Whipper Snappers, managed a launch of only 55 feet. The Moab Friends-For-Wheelin’ team came in at third place.

While many of the festival’s attendants showed up for the pumpkin launching, the big excitement of the day was the Big 10 inch pumpkin cannon. Several times throughout the day on Saturday, the air was punctuated with a loud thud followed by a cloud of smoke from the cannon, which could barely be seen from its location about a half-mile away.

“They took three or four shots today,” Moab resident Jerry Shue said. “Only one of those was a good shot.” He referred to the other shots as “makin’ pie,” meaning that the pumpkin exploded as it exited the barrel.

Times-Independent reporter Lisa J. Church contributed to this report.