Enchanted Highway

Gary Greff was a schoolteacher in Regent watching the town empty - population falling, school closing, businesses shutting - and decided in 1989 that giant roadside sculpture might give people a reason to drive the road. He had no art or welding training and learned as he went. Seven large works now stand along the fifty-one kilometres, made from scrap metal and oil-field pipe: Geese in Flight, listed by Guinness as the largest scrap metal sculpture, stands about thirty-three metres high and forty-six across; there are also grasshoppers, deer, fish, a Teddy Roosevelt on horseback and a pheasant family. Each has a pull-off. Regent at the end has a themed hotel he also created.

What's there

• Seven large scrap-metal works - spread over fifty-one kilometres.
• Geese in Flight - listed as the largest scrap metal sculpture.
• Pull-offs at each sculpture - on an otherwise empty road.
• A project by one untrained man - begun in 1989 to save a town.

When to go

May to October. Half a day for the full route.

Good to know

It is a slow drive on a two-lane road with nothing else along it. Winter snow closes it. There are no services between the ends. Whether it saved Regent is debatable - the population has kept falling.

Nearby

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is west; Dickinson is north.

Key facts