Fred Smith's Wisconsin Concrete Park

The Wisconsin Concrete Park in Phillips, about 22 miles south of Park Falls, is one of the great examples of American outsider art. Fred Smith, a retired lumberjack, spent 16 years building a forest of over 200 concrete sculptures on his property — figures from American folklore, history, and his own imagination, all encrusted with glass, mirrors, quartz, and rock.

The figures depict Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, frontier scenes, Native American warriors, farmers, animals, and more. They're rough-hewn and powerful, not slick, and the more you look at them the more interesting they become. The park is free to visit, maintained by the Kohler Foundation. Allow an hour or two to walk through properly.

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Fred Smith never called himself an artist — he was a farmer, lumberjack, and tavern owner who spent his retirement building concrete sculptures in his yard. He worked from 1948 to 1964, creating over 200 life-sized figures embedded with broken glass, mirrors, and stones. When asked why he made them, he said he wanted to show people that farmers could do something too. He died in 1976; the park has been preserved and maintained by a local arts foundation ever since.

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