The most startling thing about Ida Grove is the collection of full-scale castle replicas that appear without warning among the town's ordinary streets and cornfield surroundings. They are the work of Byron Godbersen, founder of Midwest Industries — a manufacturer of farm and construction equipment — who spent the 1970s and 1980s indulging a passion for medieval European architecture on a distinctly Iowa scale.
The most prominent structure is the castle-style building that served as the Midwest Industries headquarters, complete with stone-faced walls, crenellated battlements, and towers that would look at home in the Loire Valley. Godbersen also built a castle-themed skating rink and, famously, a half-scale wooden replica of HMS Bounty that sat for years near the edge of town. The Bounty replica has since been dismantled, but several of the castle structures remain standing.
Walking or driving past these buildings is a free and quietly surreal experience. They are best understood as the product of one man's determination to build whatever he liked in a place where land was cheap and nobody could stop him — a tradition with a long history in the American Midwest.