About ten miles east of Vinita via Highway 28A, Ed Galloway's Totem Pole Park is one of the great American folk art environments — an outdoor sculpture garden created over 24 years by a retired school manual arts teacher working entirely alone. The result is extraordinary: dozens of concrete totem poles and a Noah's Ark building, all decorated with coloured tiles and carved figures, set on a quiet rural property that feels completely disconnected from any mainstream tourist circuit.
The site fell into severe disrepair after Galloway's death in 1962 but was rescued and restored by the Kansas Grass Roots Art Association and local volunteers from the 1990s onward. Today it's in good condition and free to visit. This is the kind of place that Route 66 was made for — an idiosyncratic vision executed with complete commitment, in the middle of nowhere.