230 Concrete Folk Sculptures Along Highway 13
N8236 State Highway 13, Phillips, WI 54555
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission. Park is open daylight hours year-round.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Grass paths and gravel; mostly flat
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1948 · National Register of Historic Places · American Folk Art · Outsider Art Environment · Kohler Foundation Preservation
Fred Smith was born in 1886 in Spirit, Wisconsin, the son of German immigrants. He worked as a lumberjack through the regional camps and built and operated the Rock Garden Tavern on his property along Highway 13 in Phillips, retiring from lumber work in 1948. That same year, he began creating concrete sculptures around the tavern and his homestead, eventually producing approximately 230 figures over sixteen years of self-taught work.
Smith built his figures over wooden armatures wrapped with steel pipe and wire, then sheathed the structures in concrete and decorated the surfaces with shards of beer bottles drawn from the tavern's inventory. His subjects ranged across American folk and historical iconography - Sacagawea, Ben Hur, Paul Bunyan, miners, soldiers, Native American figures, and woodland animals. His first significant work was inspired by an image of a leaping antlered deer he had seen on a child's sweater.
A stroke in 1964 ended his sculptural work. Smith died in 1976, and the Kohler Foundation acquired the property shortly afterward to ensure its preservation. The site is now part of the Price County park system, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and overseen by Friends of Fred Smith in partnership with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. It is one of the major surviving sites of American outsider and folk-environment art.
Sources
The Wisconsin Concrete Park is best understood as folk art rather than as a haunted site. Visitor reports of strange sensations - cold pockets of air on warm days, the impression of being watched by the dense crowd of figures, and unexplained shapes in long-exposure night photography - are typical of any large sculptural installation where human-shaped objects are placed in unexpected density.
None of these accounts originate from documented paranormal investigations. They circulate through community paranormal sites and trip-report blogs without primary sourcing. Hauntbound presents the park primarily as a major folk-art destination; its inclusion in haunted-place indexes appears to derive from the visual disorientation of standing among 230 life-size concrete figures rather than from any specific lore associated with Fred Smith or his property.
Smith's own intent was celebratory. He built the figures, in his own description, for the public to enjoy, and the park has been a free, daylight-hours destination since the Kohler Foundation acquired it in 1976.
Media Appearances
Walk among 230 concrete sculptures built by retired lumberjack Fred Smith between 1948 and 1964. Figures include Sacagawea, Ben Hur, woodland animals, miners, soldiers, and the Rock Garden Tavern's original cast - all embellished with shards of beer bottles from Smith's bar.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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