Down a lonely two-lane road running south from the interstate through empty prairie country, a traveler comes upon one of the plains' most delightful surprises: a series of enormous sculptures, some as tall as a house, welded from scrap metal and set right in the fields beside the road. Tin geese take flight, a giant grasshopper looms over the grass, a metal family waves at the passing cars.

Giants Among the Grain

The Enchanted Highway, as it is known, is the labor of love of a local determined to draw visitors to a fading prairie town and give them a reason to leave the freeway. Each towering sculpture was raised over years of patient work, and together they turn an ordinary drive across empty country into a rolling open-air gallery unlike anything else on the plains.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• Enormous scrap-metal sculptures line a remote prairie highway.
• The sculptures were built to draw visitors to a fading town.
• Each towering work took years of patient welding to complete.

It is folk art on a giant scale, cheerful and unpretentious, and it succeeds precisely because it is so unexpected in so remote a place. The almanac counts the Enchanted Highway among the plains' most endearing roadside wonders — proof that one determined soul can plant giants in a field and make the whole world detour to see them.