Our introduction to North Dakota was driving across vast landscapes on our way to the town of Bowman and Butte View State Park for a night.
It was off the next morning to find the “world’s biggest scrap metal sculpture,” (2002 Guinness Book of World Records). To quote the June, 2007 issue of Smithsonian Magazine: “If Gary Greff built whimsical, giant metal sculptures along a two-lane highway leading to his struggling hometown of Regent, North Dakota, would they come?” The answer is a quiet ‘yes’ but the process has come slowly, slowly over nearly 18 years for the 200 or so souls of Regent. Most of the sculptures are made from old oil well tanks, pipes and scrap metal, erected on land leased to him by cooperative farmers with the donated help of friends and supporters. The unmarked 30 mile stretch of highway between Gladstone and Regent is now officially known as the Enchanted Highway, a name Gary envisioned in 1989 when he began his project to create a huge roadside tourist attraction that would save his town from slow economic death. This highway was so beautiful we felt it could have been called enchanted even without the sculptures.
Prairie Folk Whirligig –24 foot house with figures that actually move.
The Tin Family 1991 – Tin Pa is 45 feet tall, Ma is 44 and Son is 23 feet.
Teddy Rides Again 1993 - 51 feet tall and over 9000 lbs. of pipe.
Pheasants on the Prairie 1996 - Rooster is 70 feet long and 40 tall; hen is 60 feet long and 35 tall; chicks are 20 long and 15 feet tall, all made of wire mesh used for screening gravel.
Grasshoppers in the Field 1999 –The Big Hopper is 50 feet long and 40 tall.
Geese in Flight 2001 – “Largest Scrap Metal Sculpture in the World”. The sun ray is 156 by 110 feet. The largest goose is 19 feet long with a 30 foot wingspan.
The Deer Family 2002 – The Buck was blown over in a windstorm, but the doe is still standing at 50 feet tall and 50 feet long.
Fisherman’s Dream 2005 – seven fish made out of tin, the largest is 70 feet long.
After an ‘enchanting’ afternoon of sculpture photo ops we drove to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the beginning of the North Dakota Badlands. We just chilled for a couple of days beneath the cottonwoods near the Little Missouri River and the site of Roosevelt’s first cattle operation, the Maltese Cross Ranch. He so loved the badlands that he also set up a second cattle operation a little north of here, known as the Elkhorn Ranch. There is a fine little museum at the Park’s Visitor Center displaying personal artifacts and photos of this time in President Roosevelt’s early life and of the CCC corps that built the first park structures here in the 30’s and 40’s.
South Unit
Well worth a visit in addition to the wide open landscape and strange geologic features of the area.
For me personally the prairie dog towns were the very best thing in the whole park!
We thought we were so lucky when we were driving around the scenic loop in the Badlands of North Dakota just to see a herd of wild horses off in a canyon or up on a bluff but then we were blessed to come upon a herd of Bison up on a knoll. A moment later we were able to drive alongside one lone old bull out for a stroll and watch him stop for a good ant hill wallow. Little did we know what Lady Luck had in store for us!
Wild Horses
Prairie Bison
Lone Bison
There were about 40 or 50 of those magnificent mammals right in the campground when we returned! We waited patiently, with little talking, lots of photographing and no barking! They finally crossed the road and we got to our camp spot.
I got my dinner but just when I was starting to relax and enjoy a little digestion snooze, guess who came to dinner? Yup, the whole herd, I swear! They were every size, shape and attitude. Kae encouraged me to come and stay with her in the Pod, but Cokie, the forever photographer, stayed quietly outside with both the video and the still cameras rolling. These animals are so huge and when they are only about five feet away from you they are even bigger! Folks, this was truly a once in a lifetime experience for all of us and I was not about to try to bark them into leaving; no siree! It would be hard to describe the sound they make but think of a family of tigers purring, rumbling, growling and maybe it would be close. I wondered at one point what a million of these beauties must have sounded like but then I thought how awful the silence must have been for the Indians when the bison were all gone!
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