About Enchanted Highway
A two-lane county road in western North Dakota has been turned into a 32-mile outdoor gallery of gigantic metal creatures. The Enchanted Highway begins at Interstate 94 near Gladstone with Geese in Flight, a sprawling sculpture of metal birds rising over the prairie, then continues south toward Regent through a sequence of increasingly improbable roadside scenes.
Artist Gary Greff began the project as a way to attract travelers into the small town of Regent. Instead of installing sculptures at ordinary human scale, he went enormous. The route includes a giant tin family, grasshoppers, pheasants, deer, a mounted rider, and Fisherman’s Dream, where huge metal fish appear to leap above the landscape.
The open prairie is part of what makes the highway work. There is little visual clutter around most of the pieces, so a forty-foot pheasant or enormous grasshopper can appear on the horizon long before a driver reaches it. Most sculptures have pull-off areas and informational kiosks. Geese in Flight is viewed from the area near the interstate rather than from a dedicated parking area directly beneath it.
The route terminates in Regent, where the project continues to shape the town’s identity. Travelers should check the official North Dakota Tourism information before driving the full route, especially during winter weather. Few road trips make thirty-two miles of empty prairie feel this deliberately strange.