Volkwagen Beetle Spider in Avoca. Photo: Council Bluffs CVB
As a lifelong Iowan, Business Record columnist Dave Elbert knows a lot about Iowa. But even he learned a few things from a book called “Secret Iowa: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure.” It was written by Megan Bannister, a Chicago native who moved to Des Moines more than a decade ago to study journalism at Drake University and stayed.
Elbert noted a few highlights in a recent column, including the “usual Iowa suspects” like Albert the Bull in Audubon, Snake Alley in Burlington and the Fenelon Place Elevator in Dubuque. He also wrote about:
- Iowa’s “wacky arachnid,” a spider sculpture that consists of the body of a Volkswagen Beetle held aloft by eight legs of welded steel pipe in Avoca.
- A 60-foot stack of 200 rusted wagon wheels that resemble a giant menorah in Grinnell.
- A pink fiberglass elephant that took a ride on giant skis before it was installed outside the Pink Elephant Supper Club in Marquette.
Elbert’s column also mentions the infamous Cardiff Giant, a 19th-century hoax that was carved out of chunk of Fort Dodge gypsum, touted as an ancient relic in a touring shows and stored for decades in the home of former Des Moines Register publisher Gardner Cowles, whose son and his grade-school buddies “smashed a delicate part of the giant’s anatomy with a hammer.” The original Cardiff Giant ended up in Cooperstown, New York, but you can see a replica – a fake of a fake — at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge.
