Grotto of the Redemption
Interesting facts
- A stalagmite weighing about 2,200 pounds, brought from Carlsbad Caverns, sits near the top of the Sermon on the Mount scene.
- A single amethyst weighing some 300 pounds is built into the back wall of the Christmas Chapel.
- Almost a hundred carloads of rock and stone went into the grotto, much of it sorted and handled many times before being set.
- In the 1950s the builders received special permission to remove a petrified log from a national forest in Arizona; its slices crown the 13th Station of the Cross.
- The 'sky' of the Christmas Chapel is made largely of blue azurite and green malachite, two copper minerals that usually occur together.
- The snow-capped peaks in the grotto are crystals of dogtooth spar calcite, gathered mainly around Joplin, Missouri.
- Until Father Louis Greving arrived in 1946 and persuaded Dobberstein to install an electric hoist, every stone was lifted into place by hand.
- Dobberstein's chief helper, Matt Szerensce, joined the project straight out of high school in 1912 and kept working on it for 52 years.
- No record was kept of the labour hours or money spent on the grotto; Dobberstein reportedly wanted its cost known to God alone.
- Dobberstein served as pastor of the West Bend parish for 57 years, from 1898 until his death in 1954, and is buried half a mile from the grotto.
Why it is worth it
Nine connected grottos of concrete encrusted with stones, crystals, shells, fossils and petrifications fill a full city block in the small Iowa farm town of West Bend. Each grotto frames a scene from the life of Christ, and the whole is believed to be the largest man-made grotto of its kind in the world. It is often described as the most complete collection of minerals, fossils, shells and petrifications ever assembled in one place.
It is the life's work of one man. Paul Matthias Dobberstein, born in Rosenfeld, Germany, in 1872, trained at St. Francis Seminary in Wisconsin, where he built a first small grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes, and was ordained in 1897. Local tradition holds that, falling gravely ill with pneumonia, he vowed to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary if he recovered. He began stockpiling rocks and gems, and in 1912 started construction at West Bend, where he served as pastor of the parish of Saints Peter and Paul. His method was simple and laborious: set ornamental rock and precious stones, piece by piece, into wet concrete. He kept at it year round for 42 years, joined from 1946 by Father Louis Greving, and by his death in 1954 the grotto covered a city block. Helpers carried the work on after him.
Dobberstein also built smaller grottos and shrines elsewhere in Iowa and in Wisconsin, and his example inspired Mathias Wernerus to start the Dickeyville Grotto in 1930, giving rise to a whole American tradition of religious grotto building. The West Bend grotto was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and raised to the rank of a diocesan shrine, the first in the Diocese of Sioux City, in 2015. A museum beside it displays precious and semi-precious stones from around the world along with photographs of the construction, and the shrine appears in David Lynch's film The Straight Story.
Getting there
The grotto stands in the centre of West Bend, a town of about 800 people in Palo Alto County, northwest Iowa. The nearest city is Fort Dodge, about 57 km away. The nearest airport is Fort Dodge Regional Airport (FOD), about 50 km away in a straight line.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption is a religious shrine in West Bend, Iowa, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sioux City. A conglomeration of nine grottos depicting scenes in the life of Jesus, it contains a large collection of minerals and petrifications and is believed to be the largest grotto of its kind.
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