The Enchanted Highway: Giants on the Prairie
In 1989 a schoolteacher in Regent, North Dakota, watched his hometown emptying out and decided to build something big enough that people would drive out of their way to see it. Gary Greff had no art training. He started welding anyway.
What he made is 32 paved miles of giant scrap-metal sculpture running south from Interstate 94 to Regent — seven of them, free, standing in open farm country and visible from a long way off. The first one you meet, Geese in Flight, has held the Guinness record for the world's largest scrap metal sculpture since 2002: 110 feet tall, 154 feet wide, and just under 158,000 pounds.
One of the sculptures is Roosevelt on horseback. It is a roadside nod rather than history, but it is a good one, and this is the easiest half-day detour on the whole Bismarck–Medora corridor.
Driving it: Gladstone to Regent
Leave Medora after breakfast and run 45 miles east on I 94 to Exit 72 at Gladstone. Geese in Flight stands right there beside the interstate, so you have seen the biggest one before you have properly started.
From the exit the highway runs 32 paved miles south to Regent. Every sculpture has a developed pull-out, several have picnic shelters, and there is nothing to book and nothing to pay. In driving order southward:
- Geese in Flight (2001) — at Exit 72, the Guinness record holder
- Deer Crossing (2002) — just past Gladstone, west side of the road
- Grasshoppers in the Field (1999)
- Fisherman's Dream (2006)
- Pheasants on the Prairie (1996)
- Teddy Roosevelt Rides Again (1993)
- The Tin Family (1991) — the first one Greff built, and the last one you reach
Three to four hours with stops · 45 miles from Medora to Exit 72, then 32 miles south
Regent, and the man who built it
Regent sits at the southern end of the road. Greff opened the Enchanted Castle here in 2012 — a hotel, steakhouse and tavern built into the town's old school building — so there is somewhere to eat and somewhere to sleep at the end of the drive.
Greff was a teacher and principal in Regent with no formal training in art. He started in 1989 because the town was losing people and he wanted a reason for cars to stop. He is still the one who maintains the sculptures. The highway now pulls in something like six thousand tourist cars a year, in a town of a few hundred people.
From Regent you can either stay the night or turn back north up the same 32 miles to I 94. Running out to Dickinson on ND 22 instead is about 48 miles.
One to two hours in Regent · 32 miles back to Exit 72, or about 48 miles to Dickinson
Make a day of it: the other North Dakota giants
If you are carrying on east toward Bismarck, the state has more of these, all free and all beside the road.
Salem Sue stands on School Hill above New Salem at Exit 127, about 103 miles from Medora — a Holstein cow 38 feet high and 50 feet long, built in 1974 and claimed as the world's largest. Sandy the Sandhill Crane is at Steele, 40 feet tall and about four and a half tons, raised in 1999. And Dakota Thunder, the World's Largest Buffalo, has been looking over the James River valley at Jamestown since 1959 — 26 feet tall, 46 feet long, sixty tons of concrete.
None of them are subtle. That is the point.
A half day of stops · about 103 miles from Medora to New Salem, Jamestown further east on I 94
Before you go
The sculptures are free, unstaffed and open all the time. There are no gates and no hours — you just pull over.
The road is paved the whole way, but it is a rural two-lane with no services between Gladstone and Regent. Fill the tank before you turn south, and take water in summer.
Hours for the Enchanted Castle's restaurant and tavern vary by season and are not always the same as the hotel's, so call ahead if you are planning dinner in Regent rather than just a look at the building.
Library hours are seasonal — see Hours when you plan the Medora end of the day.