One exit off I-94 unlocks the strangest free road trip in southwestern North Dakota

They’re visible from the interstate

You’re cruising along Interstate 94 in southwestern North Dakota when something massive rises from the prairie. It looks like a flock of metal geese, 110 feet tall, catching the light above the grassland.

That’s your first clue. Turn south at Exit 72 near Gladstone, and for the next 32 miles, eight towering scrap metal sculptures stand guard over a two-lane road that ends in a town of a few hundred people.

The whole drive is free, open year-round, and the story behind it starts with one man trying to save his hometown.

A retired principal taught himself to weld

Gary Greff came back to Regent in 1989 and found his hometown fading. He had no art training and no welding skills.

But he noticed travelers pulling over to photograph a metal figure a local farmer had made from a hay bale, and something clicked. Nearby farmers taught him to weld, and Greff started building.

His logic was simple: nobody drives 30 miles for a normal sculpture, but they might drive for the world’s largest. He has spent over 35 years proving himself right.

The world’s largest scrap metal sculpture greets you first

Geese in Flight sits right at Exit 72, and you can spot it from the interstate in both directions. The piece stands 110 feet tall, stretches 154 feet wide, and weighs over 157,000 pounds.

Greff built it from old oil well tanks and pipe, shaping it into Canadian geese flying against a sunburst backdrop. The Guinness Book of World Records recognized it as the world’s largest scrap metal sculpture in 2002.

You haven’t even left the highway ramp yet.

A 75-foot buck leaps over the rolling hills

Head south and the second sculpture comes into view: a 75-foot-tall buck mid-leap over a towering fence, with a 50-foot doe standing nearby.

Greff built both from old oil well tanks and designed them as silhouettes, so they blend into the prairie landscape behind them.

The site went up in 2002 and includes a small metal maze where kids can run around while you take in the scale of the thing. Each sculpture has its own parking area and most have picnic shelters.

Giant grasshoppers tower over metal wheat stalks

If you’ve ever driven through farm country, you know grasshoppers come with the territory.

Greff turned that reality into a sculpture: one grasshopper standing about 40 feet tall and stretching nearly 50 feet long, surrounded by smaller grasshoppers and tall metal wheat stalks.

He installed the piece in 1999 as a nod to the invasions that plague farmers in the region. The road between sculptures passes through rolling hills, buttes, and fields that fill with sunflowers in late summer.

Metal trout leap 70 feet through a frozen pond

Fisherman’s Dream might be the most intricate stop on the highway.

Metal trout and other fish leap up to 70 feet through a suspended pond surface, and a tiny fisherman in a boat tries to hook the giant catch while a dragonfly hovers above. A sunken tugboat sits nearby as part of the scene.

Greff cut and painted each fish scale by hand. All the sculptures face north, so you get the full effect as you drive south from the interstate.

Real birds nest inside the giant metal pheasants

A 40-foot rooster, a 35-foot hen, and their chicks stand along the road, built from pipe and wire mesh. The rooster weighs about 13,000 pounds.

The hen comes in around 12,000, and each chick tips the scale at 5,000.

Greff installed the piece in 1996 as a tribute to pheasant hunting, a tradition that runs deep in western North Dakota.

Over the years, real birds figured out the wire mesh makes a solid home and started nesting inside the sculpture.

Teddy Roosevelt rides a rearing horse on the prairie

Only one sculpture on the highway honors a person instead of wildlife. A 51-foot figure of Theodore Roosevelt sits atop a rearing horse, bent from oil well pipe.

Next to it, local volunteer carpenters built a life-sized wooden stagecoach pulled by four horses.

Roosevelt spent formative years ranching in the Dakota Territory in the 1880s, and this stretch of North Dakota still feels like the land he knew.

The piece went up in 1993, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park is a short drive west.

The very first sculpture has barbed wire hair

Near the southern end of the highway, just north of Regent, you reach the Tin Family, the sculpture that started it all in 1991. Dad stands 45 feet tall.

Mom is 44 feet. Their son is 23 feet and holds a lollipop.

Greff built them from old fuel tanks, oil drums, and telephone poles, and gave Mom a head of barbed wire hair. They look like something out of a prairie folk tale, standing in the grass where the road meets town.

A 42-foot dragon guards the town of Regent

The newest sculpture sits at the Enchanted Castle grounds in Regent.

A 41-foot knight in tin armor faces off against a 42-foot dragon that stretches nearly 100 feet from nose to tail, clad in chain-link fence to look like scales.

Greff started building it in 2016 and formally unveiled it in summer 2025.

He named it for Albert Dobitz, a local farmer who volunteered years of work on the Enchanted Highway project.

Sleep inside a castle that used to be a high school

Greff converted Regent’s old high school into a medieval-themed hotel and opened it in 2012. You cross a drawbridge to enter, and knights in armor line the hallways.

Inside, the Excalibur Steakhouse serves meals, a tavern pours drinks, and Greff himself often waits on guests. The old gym is still intact, complete with its original painted sports mascot on the wall.

He treats the Castle as the final stop on the Enchanted Highway experience.

Local farmers leased land for one dollar a year

None of this would exist without the people around Regent.

Local farmers and ranchers leased land for as little as one dollar so Greff could place his sculptures. In 2023, the Friends of the Enchanted Highway Foundation formed as a nonprofit to keep the art standing.

They have already renovated the gift shop in Regent with new windows, flooring, and wheelchair access.

North Dakota kicked in $75,000 in its 2019-2020 budget for sculpture maintenance, and Greff has plans for more work, including a 70-foot spiderweb.

Drive the Enchanted Highway in North Dakota

You can pick up the Enchanted Highway at Exit 72 on I-94, about 20 miles east of Dickinson and 85 miles west of Bismarck.

The 32-mile drive takes about 45 minutes without stops, but give yourself at least an hour or two to pull over at each sculpture.

When you reach Regent, the Enchanted Castle has lodging, meals, and a gift shop where you can grab miniature sculpture replicas. Donations and purchases at the shop help keep the project going.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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