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Above, In Metropolis, Ill., visitors can pose next to the 15-foot-tall Superman statue and then cross the street to the Super Museum. There they will find television and movie memorabilia as it relates to the Man of Steel. Metropolis Tourism photo
Below: At Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in southwest Illinois, visitors can make the trek to the top of Monks Mound, once the residence of a Mississippian chief. Cahokia Mounds SHS photo |
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Any quest for unusual museums or oddities in the Midwest should start in downtown St. Louis with the City Museum at 701 N. 15th St. It’s an exhilarating creation continually springing from the imagination of artist and museum founder Bob Cassilly and housed in a 10-story, 600,000-square-foot building that once housed International Shoe Company. Sculpted serpentine walls surrounding the parking lot, a stone castle tower and the school bus seemingly driving into midair from the museum’s roof let visitors know they’ve arrived.
Once on the parking lot, MonstroCity, a unique outdoor playground attached to the front of the building, looms above visitors entering the museum. MonstroCity uses open-air, slinky-like pathways to link guests to a fire engine, the aforementioned tower, a nearly three-story cupola and two Saber 40 airplane fuselages, one of which appears to be soaring from the building.
Museum attractions on the three floors and mezzanine are no less startling, with surreal manifestations of the work of Cassilly and his team of artisans. Visitors can walk through a sculpture of a Bowhead whale, climb a three-story Brontosaurus staircase, explore a tree house and Enchanted Caves with an enclosed seven-story slide, or slide from the third floor to the lobby.
A dedication to reuse is evident throughout, from a wall made of bedpans to the façade of a local title company used as the ticket booth. Architectural features throughout the building are changed on a regular basis, and the on-site St. Louis Architectural Museum houses numerous relics and artifacts from St. Louis and other cities.
The list of interesting and fun activities in this quirky environment seemingly are endless and includes a 76-foot-long, 21,500-pound No. 2 pencil; the Museum of Mirth, Mystery and Mayhem, where the mysteries of the carnival midway are examined; Art City, where professional artists work and visitors are allowed to create their own work; a Shoelace Factory with vintage machines; a Toddler Town for the youngest set; and even the World Aquarium, a 13,500-square-foot facility.
Food is available at Samwiches in the City on the mezzanine, while late-night snacks are available at Store 4 on the building’s fourth floor.
Admission is $12 for ages 3 and up; an additional $6 for the aquarium is charged. For more information, call (314) 231-CITY or visit www.citymuseum.org.
Show me more madness
The Glore Psychiatric Museum at 3406 Frederick Ave., in St. Joseph, Mo., has one of the best collections of full-sized replicas, interactive displays, audio-visuals, artifacts and documents illustrating the history and the treatment of mental illness.
Located adjacent to a former mental hospital that was named the State Lunatic Asylum No. 2 when it opened in 1874, the museum is housed in the hospital’s former admitting and surgical unit. There are four floors of exhibits and displays concerning early mental health treatments that seem more suited to foster mental health problems than control or cure illnesses. A tranquilizer chair with restraints has the eerie look of a prototype electric chair–sans electricity. A replica of an enormous, enclosed, wooden hollow wheel on a stand, much like a gerbil wheel, was supposed to help patients walk themselves to sanity or, like a gerbil, at least tire themselves out.
The Utica Crib was designed to control or calm adult patients, but looks more frightening than soothing. Also on view are 1,446 items–many of them made of metal–swallowed by a mental health patient. There are many other frightening tools likely used for poking, prodding and scaring patients back to sanity.
Admission to the Glore, which also covers the adjacent St. Joseph Museum and Black Archives Museum, is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2 for students; children ages 6 and younger are free. AAA members receive 50 cents off adult admission. For more information, call (816) 232-8471 or visit www.stjosephmuseum.org/glore.php.
Oddities in Illinois
The largest manmade dirt mound in North America is at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site on Collinsville Road. At nearly 100 feet in height, Monks Mound is the tallest of 70 preserved mounds that were built between 700 and 1,000 years ago by the Mississippian culture. Visitors can climb a stairway to the top of Monks Mound, once a Mississippian chief’s residence, and imagine what the six-square-mile ancient city with nearly 20,000 thriving inhabitants might have looked like.
The site also has Woodhenge, a circular celestial calendar composed of wooden posts instead of the stone structures found at Stonehenge; a reconstructed stockade; a six-mile nature/culture trail; and an outstanding interpretive center fitting UNESCO’s designation of the area as a World Heritage Site.
Entrance to the site is free of charge, although a donation of $4 for adults, $2 for children, and $10 for families is suggested at the center. Call (618) 346-5160 or visit www.cahokiamounds.com for hours and other information.
Collinsville also is home to the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle on Illinois Route 159 southeast of downtown St. Louis. The 170-foot-tall water tower is topped by a gigantic, colorful bottle of Brook’s catsup. Named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, a private group now maintains the icon of Americana that was constructed in 1949. The annual Catsup Bottle Festival will be July 12 at the American Legion Post 365 grounds, 1022 Vandalia. For informtaion, visit www.catsupbottle.com.
The memory of another icon of Americana is kept alive in Metropolis at the Super Museum, 517 Market St., across the street from a colorful, 15-foot-tall bronze statue honoring the Man of Steel.
Superman aficionados will find television series memorabilia, props from the popular movies–including outfits worn by actor Christopher Reeve–and much more. Still, they will only see about one-fifth of the 100,000 items collected by store owner Jim Hambrick, who moved the collection from California more than two decades ago.
Admission is $3, $1 for seniors 66 and older, free for kids 5 and younger. For information, call (618) 524-5518 or click www.supermuseum.com.
Incredible Indiana
One of Indiana’s most nefarious native sons is the focus of the John Dillinger Museum located in the Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond, 7770 Corinne Drive. Life-size wax figures, interactive exhibits and educational displays highlight the life and death at age 31 of the Indianapolis area native who became Public Enemy No. 1, as well as the lives of several of his gangster contemporaries and the G-Men and cops who pursued them during the 1930s. Several exhibits show where criminal lives lead and the role that improved police tactics and technology played in their apprehension.
Admission is $4 for adults, $3 for seniors 50 and older and $2 for children ages 6-12; children 5 and under are free. For hours and more information, call (219) 989-7979 or click www.dillingermuseum.com.
Police would have had a better chance against Dillinger and his ilk if they had a few of the military vehicles on display at the 50-acre Ropkey Armor Museum in Crawfordsville, 5649 E. 150 North. The collection includes an M3A1 scout car, which was the first vehicle obtained by museum owner Fred Ropkey, plus World War II Sherman tanks, a Cold War-era M48 Patton tank, a relatively modern M109 155mm self-propelled howitzer, and even a restored diminutive M1917 six-ton tank, the U.S. military’s first foray into armor in the post-World War I era.
Originally located in Indianapolis where it was housed in open-air hangers, much of the museum’s collection now is on display in a heated and air-conditioned building. Admission is free, but donations are accepted. For more information or to arrange a tour, call (765) 794-0238 or click www.ropkeyarmormuseum.com.
Quirkiness in Kansas
Agriculture and Kansas go hand-in-hand, but the once-thriving, strip-mining legacy in the southeastern section is brought front and center near West Mineral by Big Brutus a 160-foot-tall behemoth that was the second-largest electric shovel in the world when it was built in 1962.
Big Brutus weighs in at 11 million pounds, has a 150-foot-long boom and a dipper with a 150-ton capacity, which is enough to fill three railroad cars. It was built to remove overburden–the earth and rock covering veins of coal–and was retired in 1974 when the coal played out in southeast Kansas.
A visitor center on the site offers exhibits and displays about the area’s mining industry and a 30-minute movie about the giant’s construction and use. Admission is $8 for adults, $7.50 for seniors 65 and older and $5 for children ages 6–12; children ages 5 and younger are free. The site, 6509 N.W. 60th St., is six miles west of the junction of K7 & K102. For more information, call (620) 827-6177 or visit www.bigbrutus.org.
If you liked marbles as a kid, you will find a no more colorful or enjoyable destination than Bonner Springs and its Moon Marble Company, 600 E. Front St. Every type and color of marble imaginable, and the games in which they are used, can be found here. Bins and bags are loaded with inexpensive machine-made marbles of all sizes, and handmade marbles range in price from $25 for a Snippy signature creation by artist and owner Bruce Breslow to $400 for the School of Fish marble by Cathy Richardson.
Free marble-making demonstrations generally take place between about 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, with more frequency during the summer, but call (913-441-1432, www.moonmarble.com) to confirm other times and dates and arrive at least a half-hour before quitting time.
Although not quite marble-shaped, a roadside attraction in Cawker City is somewhat rounded but considerably larger. The World’s Largest Ball of Sisal Twine, located on the south side of state Highway 24, started in 1953 and now is housed in its own pavilion. The ball is approaching 19,000 pounds. Check out the Masterpiece Twine Walk, an outdoor art display featuring 40 paintings on Main Street. Visitors seeking immortality by adding to the creation can call caretaker Linda Clover (785-781-4470 or 877-266-2963), and she will try to meet them at the site with the twine.
Randy Cosby is a contributor from St. Louis, Mo.
Additional attractions you’ll want to see
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Memorabilia relating to James Dean, cartoonist Jim Davis and other notable locals can be explored at the Fairmount Historical Museum. Marion County CVB photo |
Remembering James Dean
The late actor James Dean is the focus of the museum but other notable locals, including cartoonist Jim Davis of “Garfield” fame, CBS reporter Phil Jones and former National Hurricane Center director Jim Sheets are among the natives of Grant County featured in exhibits at the Fairmount Historical Museum in Indiana.
The museum, located at 203 E. Washington St., contains awards, clothes, motorcycles and other memorabilia from Dean, who was born in nearby Marion, graduated from Fairmount High School, and is buried here. Dean’s legacy is celebrated annually at the James Dean Festival, scheduled this year for Sept. 24–27.
The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission in free and donations are accepted. Call (765) 948-4555 or visit
www.jamesdeanartifacts.com.
–Randy Cosby
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According to legend, the giant sandstone boulders near Minneapolis, Kan., are petrified Thunderbird eggs. But they were formed millions of years ago after an inland sea receded and ground water containing calcium carbonate seeped through porous sandstone cementing sand grains together. Erosion helped shape the 200 rocks. Lee Stroh photo |
Rocks that don’t roll
Rock City lies between the Flint Hills and the Smoky Hills overlooking the Solomon River Valley near Minneapolis, Kan. It is an area about the size of two football fields that contains approximately 200 sandstone boulders. Several are the size of a small house.
These rocks, called concretions, were formed millions of years ago in Dakota sandstone deposited when areas of Kansas were covered by an inland sea. This area is unusual because of the size and quantity of the boulders in such a small area.
Rock City is a not a developed tourist attraction. Park visitors will find a gravel road, a small visitor center, a couple of picnic tables, a fountain, and restrooms. A mowed nature trail winds through a 25-acre prairie on the western edge of the park. It’s an interesting place to picnic and let the children run, climb and stretch during a trip.
Rock City, Inc. manages the park with the funds raised from membership dues and park entrance fees, which are $3 for adults and 50 cents for children.
From Minneapolis, (20 miles north of Salina) go 2.5 miles southwest on K-106 and turn right at the sign. For more information, visit www.naturalkansas.org/rockcity.htm.
– Lee Stroh, Olathe, Kan.
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The most photographed building in Branson, Ripley’s Believe It or Not looks like it’s been through an earthquake. The gimmick references the great New Madrid, Mo., earthquake of 1812 that registered 8.0 on the Richter scale. Branson Lakes Area CVB photo |
Strange sightings in Branson
Can it get more weird than Ripley’s Believe It or Not attractions? On the Branson Strip (state Highway 76), the fractured-looking edifice that houses 400 oddities in seven galleries calls to the tourist, and our natural curiosity about curiosities sucks us in.
Inside the quirky museum in southwest Missouri is the mini Roman Coliseum made of playing cards, a stuffed two-headed calf, a shrunken head from Equador, a wax likeness of a Manchurian man from the 1930s called the “human unicorn” because of a horn growing out of his head, and much more.
Ripley’s Branson is located at 3326 W. Highway 76. Admission is $16.95 plus tax for adults (AAA members receive $2 off the admission), $8.95 plus tax for children 4–12, and children younger than 4 years are admitted free.
For information, call (417) 337-5300 or visit
http://ripleysbranson.com.
– Deborah Reinhardt Palmer, St. Louis, Mo.
