One Iowa priest spent 42 years covering an entire city block with precious gems

It’s the world’s largest man-made grotto

West Bend, Iowa, sits about 130 miles northwest of Des Moines, deep in the prairie where the land runs flat in every direction.

And right in the middle of town, covering a full city block, a mountain of precious stones rises out of nowhere.

The Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption holds nine separate grottos, each one depicting a scene from the life of Jesus, and together they form one of the most complete collections of minerals, fossils, shells and petrifications ever assembled in one place.

The Iowan magazine once called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” and when you stand in front of it, that doesn’t feel like a stretch.

A seminary student’s promise changed everything

Father Paul Matthias Dobberstein was born in Rosenfeld, Germany, in 1872 and came to America in his early twenties. While studying at St. Francis Seminary near Milwaukee, he caught pneumonia and nearly died.

Lying in that sickbed, he made a promise to the Virgin Mary: if he survived, he would build a shrine in her honor. He recovered, took his ordination in 1897, and arrived at Sts.

Peter and Paul Church in West Bend the following year. He spent over a decade collecting stones before he laid a single one in place in 1912.

Nine scenes carved from Italian marble

Each of the nine grottos tells a different chapter, from the Garden of Eden to the Resurrection, and every scene is carved from Italian Carrara marble.

You walk past the Stable of Bethlehem, the Home in Nazareth, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Crucifixion.

Dobberstein started with the Trinity grotto in 1912, and it took him five years to finish.

He built it in three half circles to honor the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, using calcite hauled from South Dakota’s Black Hills.

Over $4 million in rocks and minerals surround you

Stones from nearly every state and dozens of countries cover every surface.

You’ll see polished agate, malachite, azurite, quartz, jasper, fluorite, petrified wood, geodes and calcite, all of it set into concrete by hand.

Accents of 23-karat gold leaf catch the light throughout the site.

A historical appraisal put the value of the rocks and minerals at more than $4.3 million, though the true number today is likely much higher.

Dobberstein worked without blueprints or a formal plan, setting each stone and gem by instinct.

No machines, just horses and wheelbarrows

For most of those 42 years, Dobberstein worked alone.

He hauled stones by hand with horses, buckets and wheelbarrows, traveling hundreds of miles to places like Hot Springs, Ark., and the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Year after year, tons of stone arrived in West Bend by railroad boxcar.

An electric hoist didn’t show up until 1947, and by then about 80 percent of the grotto was already standing. Everything before that went up by muscle and will.

A 2,200-pound stalagmite sits near the top

Some of the stones carry their own stories. A 2,200-pound stalagmite from Carlsbad Caverns sits high on the Sermon on the Mount.

The pillars in the Stations of the Cross are reddish-brown jasper from Michigan, and petrified wood specimens came mostly from Montana and North Dakota.

In the 1950s, Dobberstein got special permission to take a petrified log from a National Forest in Arizona.

He even grew stalactites inside the Ten Commandments grotto by leaving a hole in the roof so rainwater could seep through mineral deposits over time.

The Christmas Chapel holds a 300-pound amethyst

Inside the adjacent Sts. Peter and Paul Church, the Christmas Chapel sits quietly with Dobberstein’s most delicate work.

He built it in 1927 and placed the specimens he considered too fragile for Iowa weather. A 300-pound Brazilian amethyst sits in the wall above the manger of baby Jesus.

Rocks from nearly every country and major river in the world fill the space around it. The agates lining the base of the chapel were cut and polished in Belgium before making the trip to West Bend.

The church altar won first place at the 1893 World’s Fair

The church next door deserves your time on its own.

Its main altar stands 22 feet tall, hand-carved from birdseye maple and decorated with 23-karat gold leaf. It won first place at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and arrived at the church in 1972.

Above it, a fresco painted in 1929 by Dobberstein’s brother, Bernard, covers the wall. He painted directly into wet plaster in the Italian fresco style.

The Stations of the Cross mosaics inside came from the Vatican Mosaic Studios in the 1920s.

Two men kept building after Dobberstein died

Father Louis Greving came to West Bend in 1946 to help Dobberstein with parish duties and construction. When Dobberstein died on July 24, 1954, Greving kept going for about 50 more years.

Parishioner Matt Szerensce had worked alongside Dobberstein too, and he continued until retiring in 1959. Together, the two men completed the Stable of Bethlehem and Home in Nazareth grottos.

But the shrine was never fully finished, because neither man knew how Dobberstein had planned to end it.

Dobberstein’s work sparked a grotto movement across America

What Dobberstein built in West Bend didn’t stay in West Bend.

His fellow St. Francis Seminary alumnus Mathias Wernerus visited, saw the grotto, and went home to build the Dickeyville Grotto in Wisconsin in 1930.

Dobberstein himself built at least six other smaller grottos at churches, convents and cemeteries across Iowa and Wisconsin.

He prefabricated stone panels in his West Bend workshop and shipped them to other sites, a technique that was ahead of its time.

In 2001, the Grotto of the Redemption earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

Open 24 hours a day with no admission fee

You can walk the grotto grounds any time of day, any day of the year, and you won’t pay a dime. Donations keep the place running.

Guided tours run seasonally, typically April through the end of October, daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. An on-site museum displays precious and semiprecious stones from around the world, along with photos and artifacts from the decades of construction.

A gift shop stays open year-round, so even a winter visit gives you something to take home.

Pictures don’t do it justice, and everyone says so

More than 100,000 people visit every year, and they come from all faiths and backgrounds. Rock collectors show up alongside church groups.

The grotto appeared on Roadside America and in David Lynch’s film “The Straight Story.”

Nearly everyone who goes says the same thing: you have to see it in person because the detail doesn’t translate in photos.

In the middle of the Iowa prairie, surrounded by farmland, one priest turned a small-town parish into a destination unlike anything else in America.

Visit the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa

You can find the Grotto of the Redemption at 208 1st Avenue NW in West Bend, Iowa, about 130 miles northwest of Des Moines. The nearest airport is Fort Dodge Regional.

If you want to make a weekend of it, the on-site campground has 55 RV sites and 20 tent sites, open from mid-April through Nov. 1. Check the official website for current tour times and campground reservations.

The grounds are free and open around the clock, so you can take your time.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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