“I called up some farmers and said, ‘Can you help?’” he says. Problem was, Greff was neither a welder nor an artist. Realizing many Midwesterners - particularly farmers - are exquisite welders, Greff imagined a highway drawing in tourists, and tourist dollars, with eye-popping metal sculptures dedicated to North Dakota’s rural heritage. “I saw this town was dying, and I thought ‘God dang, these small towns are going to be a thing of the past if somebody doesn’t do something,’” Greff says of his return home in the '90s after a career as a high-school administrator in Montana.
The rest is dust, wind, and a general store. Regent isn’t exactly a place you’d call “welcoming.” You might spot a car or two on the three-block main street. Gary Greff and his latest, still unfinished creation. But the Enchanted Highway wasn't designed as an isolationist attraction it was meant to save a dying town… one whose townsfolk don't always see eye to eye with its creator. As such, you're likely to have it all to yourself. If the Enchanted Highway were anywhere near a major city, it would be infested with visitors. At the end of the road, travelers are greeted by a 50-foot knight fighting a dragon in the parking lot outside the castle. The mesmerizing North Dakota scenery is frequently interrupted by something surreal: A family of gigantic metal farmers here, a small flock of dinosaur-sized pheasants there. Greff’s “castle” - once a high school, now a Camelot-themed hotel - is the end of the road on the Enchanted Highway, a 34-mile stretch of titanic metal sculptures running from the middle of nowhere off I-94 to downtown Regent, a tiny town of about 130.Ī trip down the highway is a journey into a storybook world of bright-green rolling hills, pale blue skies, and 45-foot grasshoppers. It looks a little like someone dropped a gas-station casino onto the set of Game of Thrones.īut this isn't Westeros. Light from the gothic chandeliers and video poker machines illuminates the bar’s long monastery tables. “Nobody’s going to drive 30 miles for normal,” Gary Greff says from behind the medieval bar inside his Enchanted Castle.
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