To appreciate Wisconsin’s appreciation of the wonderfully weird, you need only to look at the alternative. In so many places, mile after mile of carbon-copy big-box stores and gas stations, turn lanes and McDonald’s billboards all blur together into a never-ending stretch of sameness.
READ MORE FROM OUR “WEIRD WISCONSIN” FEATURE HERE.
Wisconsin has plenty of that, too, but we also have a statue of the Hodag, the monster mascot of Rhinelander, greeting visitors; a street fest celebrating the day a hunk of Sputnik IV crashed into the streets of Manitowoc; a town, Mount Horeb, leaning into branding with trolls because of its Norwegian heritage – and why not? It thrills me to see towns embrace and preserve their strange stories and places because they are what make us unique. The weird is a welcome reprieve from a creeping blandness consuming everything in its path.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
But why are we like this? Is it something in the cheese?
Actually, it might be the beer.
Eau Claire-based travel writers Tom and Kristi Manus point to our rich melting pot of storytellers, from Indigenous legends to tales of ghosts and goblins that followed European immigrants here. These stories blended in the best incubator for tall tales: our strong tavern culture. Weird stories beget weird places, and the Manuses have written three books on such Wisconsin attractions and oddities; their latest, Lost Treasures of Wisconsin, is out this month. To find material, they’ve spent countless hours cruising back roads and two-lane highways. Although they’ve traveled all over the world, the authors maintain that “you can go to any state and you won’t find the uniqueness you find here,” Kristi says.
Some of these unique places will continue for generations. But some of them, sadly, are starting to fade away. I present, as example, the “World’s Largest Corkscrew.” In 1979, metal fabricator Robert Vittone decided to draw eyeballs to his new liquor store by creating a 24-foot “World’s Largest Corkscrew” as part of the sign for Corkscrew Liquor Store in Hurley. Vittone passed away last year, though, and his family shuttered the business. The sign remains as of this writing but is in rough shape from years of exposure to the elements. Its time appears to be short.
Other weird monuments and stories are disappearing, too, though some remain and have found a new appreciation from travelers looking for a good social media selfie. Still, it doesn’t seem like there’s a ton of new quirk filling their place. There may be a day when most of our oddities are extinct, literally, or metaphorically disintegrating like Hurley’s giant corkscrew. What a boring world that will be.
