A 60-foot metal bull head rises out of the South Dakota prairie near Sioux Falls

Wayne Porter’s 60-foot metal giant

Somewhere along Interstate 90, about 25 miles west of Sioux Falls, a massive bull head rises out of the South Dakota grassland. It’s 60 feet tall, weighs 25 tons, and stands as high as the carved faces on Mount Rushmore.

It’s not a hallucination. It’s Porter Sculpture Park, 10 acres of handmade metal art on the open prairie near Montrose.

Over 60 sculptures wait along a looping trail through the tall grass, and the man who built all of them is probably there to meet you.

One man welded all 60-plus sculptures by himself

Wayne Porter grew up in St. Lawrence, South Dakota, a town of about 200 people.

His father ran a blacksmith shop, and by age 10, Porter had already cut his first sculpture from iron with a torch. He learned to weld at 12 and never once took a formal art class.

He went on to earn degrees in political science and history from South Dakota State University, then became a sheep rancher. Eventually, he sold his flock to fund the art that had been pulling at him his whole life.

The bull head that stops drivers cold on I-90

Porter built the bull head in two enormous sections, then had a crane lift them together. No engineering calculations. No blueprint from a professional. It took three years.

The result is a 25-ton steel head rising six stories above the prairie floor, visible from the interstate and guarded at its base by metal skeleton figures gripping halberds, each one topped with a ram’s head.

The scale of it only hits you when you’re standing next to it and realize how far up you have to tilt your chin.

A 40-foot horse Porter spent a decade building

In 2019, Porter added a second monumental piece to the park: a 40-foot-tall horse inspired by a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci. It weighs about 40 tons, making it the second-largest work on the property.

Porter spent roughly 10 years on it and has said it pushed him harder than anything else he’d built. Like the bull head, you can spot it from I-90 before you even turn off the exit.

Both of them together give you a sense of what’s waiting on the other side of that gravel road.

Dragons, hammers and a dissected frog with angel wings

The rest of the park runs the full range of what one person can dream up in a lifetime.

Dragons and dinosaurs share the trail with a Grim Reaper assembled from pipes and a cracked goldfish bowl surrounded by colorful fish. A giant hand reaches up from the earth.

Oversized vultures perch on metal frames. And then there’s the 28-foot claw hammer, one of the most photographed pieces in the park.

Porter says it honors the five hammers he broke while building his shack at the entrance. Every piece came from scrap metal, old farm equipment, and railroad tie plates.

Poetry signs turn each sculpture stop into a story

Porter didn’t stop at metal. He writes original poems and posts them on large hand-painted signs placed next to many of the sculptures.

So when you stop in front of a piece, you get the work itself and then a few lines of his thinking behind it. Some of it is funny.

Some of it reflects on prairie life. Some of it goes deeper into personal philosophy.

The signs make the trail feel less like a walk through a sculpture field and more like a slow conversation with someone who has a lot on his mind.

Walk the trail or ride a golf cart through the grass

The self-guided trail runs about a third of a mile through mowed paths in the tall grass prairie. It winds over gentle hills with open sky in every direction.

If walking is difficult, golf carts are available.

Most people take 30 minutes to an hour to get through the whole loop, but that estimate doesn’t account for stopping to read every sign or backtracking to look at something again from a different angle.

Porter keeps adding new work, so if you’ve been before, there’s a fair chance something is standing in a spot that was empty last time.

The prairie itself is part of what Porter is building

The park sits on the South Dakota Drift Prairie, and Porter has been working for years to restore the land to native tall grass.

Each spring before the park opens, a local farmer’s cows graze the property, which helps keep the ecosystem healthy. Native grasses and wildflowers have been slowly returning around the sculptures.

The effect is something no gallery can replicate: steel and iron rising out of ground that’s been here for thousands of years, with nothing but horizon on every side.

Meet Wayne Porter at the entrance before you walk the trail

Porter lives at the park during the open season, staying in a trailer near the small shack at the entrance. He’s usually around, and he likes to talk.

Visitors who spend a few minutes with him come away saying it was the best part of the trip. He’ll tell you what a sculpture means, where the metal came from, or what he’s working on next.

He also mentions, without much concern, that he’s backlogged about 200 years’ worth of ideas. He doesn’t seem worried about running out of time.

TIME magazine put it on a list of America’s top roadside stops

In 2010, TIME magazine ranked Porter Sculpture Park number 33 on its list of the Top 50 American Roadside Attractions. It holds a Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice award and a 4.4 out of 5 rating from over 140 reviews.

In July 2025, the park held its first-ever music and art festival, called Porterchela.

Visitors come from across the country and from other countries entirely, which is a remarkable reach for a 10-acre patch of South Dakota grassland run by one self-taught sculptor with a torch and a very long to-do list.

What to know before you turn off at exit 374

The park is open daily from May 15 through Oct. 15, from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Admission runs $10 for adults, $5 for ages 13 to 17, and free for kids 12 and under.

From I-90, take exit 374 and head south about a quarter mile, then take the first left onto a gravel road. Wear closed-toe shoes.

The ground is uneven in places, and cattle graze nearby in spring. Go on a weekday if you want more time with Porter to yourself.

Why it stays with you long after I-90 is in the rearview

Porter Sculpture Park is not a museum with white walls and printed labels.

It’s one person’s decades-long argument that art belongs in the open air, on real land, made from things that were already worn out and headed nowhere. The scale is physical.

The poetry is personal. The prairie is alive around it.

And Porter himself is right there, same as always. Road trips across South Dakota have a way of blurring together, but this one stop tends not to.

Visit Porter Sculpture Park in South Dakota

You can reach Porter Sculpture Park at 45160 257th St. in Montrose, South Dakota, about 25 miles west of Sioux Falls and roughly 30 minutes by car.

Take exit 374 off I-90, head south a quarter mile, and turn left onto the gravel road. The park is open daily May 15 through Oct. 15, from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for teens.

The self-guided trail takes 30 minutes to an hour, and the artist is usually on site.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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