This week at Highway Highlights we venture into the extreme southwest corner of Minnesota to a small town called Pipestone. Nicknamed “Home of the Red Stone Pipe,” Pipestone sits near the borders of Iowa and South Dakota on the Great Plains. But this place is anything but plain. First off, it’s home to this bad boy: The World’s Largest Peace Pipe.
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Right now, most Minnesotans are preparing for next week’s Christmas celebration, and this year it looks like there might actually be some snow on the ground for it. Christmas is a beloved holiday here, meaning family get-togethers, days off from work, Christmas lights, and for some lucky homes- Lutefisk. While some consider Lutefisk to be a tradition best left to the ages, one town in southwestern Minnesota has even gone so far as to forever immortalize the much-maligned fish in the way we know best – a roadside attraction.
Minnesota’s northeast corner is a rugged, scenic wilderness with rocky cliffs, crystal-clear waters, and postcard-esque little tourist towns on Lake Superior. This area is also rich in cultural history, dating back to the 1700’s, when the first Europeans in the area were French fur traders, known as Voyageurs. These intrepid explorers often met up on the trail and traded with the Ojibwe Indians native to this area. So it’s obviously no surprise that many towns in this area have put up roadside attractions to commemorate this.
One of very few glass-domed Victorian-style indoor gardens in the US, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory was built in 1914 by the German-born architect Frederick Nussbaumer, and modeled after the Royal Botanical Gardens in England. Found inside of St Paul’s Como Zoo, this indoor garden is home to more than 260 varieties of plants, including palms, ferns, flowers, bamboo, and more.
