Fred Smith's Wisconsin Concrete Park

: "alongside a highway in Phillips- Hwy 13, a jumbled crowd of over two hundred folk art figurines clog the landscape. It''s a park that is eternally crowded with revelers, spirits and beer bottles -- if not beer -- abound. The public is invited to wander through this impressive sculptural display. This display is an eerie and strange place. As you walk threw you will experience many different feelings there are areas that make your hair stand on end on hot calm days you feel cold blasts of air that will give you goose bumps During nights of full moon its said you will see dark shapes of what have been said to look like demons dancing around the park A son of German immigrants, Fred Smith was born in 1886, and spent his working life as a north woodsman. With two other men, he built the Rock Garden Tavern in 1936, which he ultimately managed after his retirement from lumber jacking in 1949. In 1950 this self-taught sculptor began crafting his unique entourage of cowboys, miners, Indians, and soldiers. Indian. His first masterpiece was inspired by the image of a large antlered deer leaping over a log that he had noticed on a boy''s sweater. He used beer bottles from his tavern to decorate the life-size concrete horde, which mostly crowds the front of the park along Hwy. 13. He built the broad-shouldered, blocky characters starting with wooden frames wrapped with mink wire, or animal skeletons."