Nick Engelbert's Grandview Historical Folk Art Museum

Nick Engelbert's Grandview is known for its creator's sense of humor. His artworks were never intended to be completely ordinary. They included various whimsical scenes such as Uncle Sam plowing with an uncooperative donkey and elephant, Paul Bunyan hanging out with Snow White, and the Engelbert family depicted as a pack of monkeys.

Engelbert, the owner of Grandview Dairy Farm, began filling his front yard with handmade sculptures in the 1930s, possibly inspired by a family trip to the nearby Dickeyville Grotto. When Nick reached retirement age, he picked up the pace, and by the early 1950s, he had completed over 40 sculptural groups. He also covered his entire farmhouse with walls of concrete encrusted with colorful shards of glass, beads, buttons, sea shells, and broken crockery from the Engelbert kitchen.

Today, Grandview remains as peaceful as it was when Nick was building his statues. Some of the sculptures have been carefully rebuilt using old family photographs. The Engelbert farmhouse has been turned into a small museum of Nick's life and work. It's a bucolic spot when the weather's nice, but even the newer sculptures look old and slightly worn, with weathered paint and cracked cement. "The statues take a beating in the winter," notes one plaque, "so we're always repairing and restoring."