House on the Rock, can't believe we've never heard of it!       

The House on the Rock, originally opened in 1959,^[2] is a complex of architecturally unique rooms, streets, gardens and shops designed by Alex Jordan, Jr. It is located north of Dodgeville, a city in Iowa County, south of Spring Green, Wisconsin and is a regional tourist attraction

In the mid 1940s, Alex Jordan started building a hilltop retreat for himself, on a rock shelf in south central Wisconsin. It didn't take long before people realized this was not going to be an ordinary house.

The "house" itself is atop Deer Shelter Rock, a column of rock approximately 60 feet tall, 70 feet by 200 feet on the top, which stands in a forest nearby.^[9] Additions were made to the original structure and other buildings added over the course of several decades. The complex now features "The Streets of Yesterday", a re-creation of an early twentieth century American town; "The Heritage of the Sea", featuring nautical exhibits and a 200-ft model of a fanciful whale-like sea creature; "The Music of Yesterday", a huge collection of automatic music machines; and what the management bills as "the world's largest indoor carousel",^[10] among other attractions. During the winter, the attraction features a Christmas theme, with decorations and a large collection of Santa Claus figures. Many of the bathrooms are decorated with strange objects, including mannequins, flowers, and preserved animals.

Jordan sold the house in 1988 to a friend who continued building on the site, adding to the collections of knick-knacks and exhibits featuring authentic pieces, reproductions, and specially-made examples of everything. The most recent addition is the "Spirit of Aviation", a collection of large model airplanes in a themed room. Another exhibit, the "Transportation Building", is under construction, but visitors can walk through and view the work in progress.

This place is an absolute dream; and by that it's the most nonsensical, eclectic, and down right strange array of style and designed by a wacky genius.  We never dreamed how big it was or how long it took to walk it all.  We went pretty quickly and still it took us 4 hours.  They do have a couple of consession stands inside and we probably should of  stopped at one about half way had we known the size.  If you are ever in the area, it is well work the drive back into the country to visit this site.

"Friend Betty Long says, "The house was like no house that was ever built. People kept coming to see what he was doing because at the time you could see it from the highway. And they would drop in on him and ... he let them."

Long has worked at The House on the Rock for more than 20 years. And she says, "They decided to start charging a little money, so they charged 50 cents. That first year, they took in over $5,000."

Jordan was more than a builder, he was also a collector. He packed his house to the gills with all sorts of things, weird and wonderful collections.

Long notes, "Alex collected everything and anything. It's a collection upon collections here."

They said he had to be eccentric; nobody in his right mind would do something like this.

Jordan didn't stop with The House on the Rock. Over the years, he added building after building filled with an ever-growing collection of oddities - everything from a miniature circus with more than a million individual figures, to the world's largest carousel, complete with 20,000 lights and 289 creatures.

Hands down, the most architecturally interesting feature is the infinity room, which juts out 218 feet over the Wisconsin valley. It has 3,064 windows, Long notes.

Many of the most bizarre displays, such as a 200-foot-long sea creature doing battle with a giant octopus, were literally dreamed up, Long says. "He always said that he could go to bed at night and wake up with a whole layout of what he was going to do with the building."

Some rooms are created from discarded odds and ends. Take the organ room. Sure, there are lots of organs, but the cool part is the pipes which used to be part of a waterworks plant in Madison, Wis.

Long says Jordan just bought stuff and kept it and then decided what to do with it later. "He might not have anything in mind for it. But if it was for sale and he heard about it, he was going to buy it," she says."

   

As we drove up the drive lined with these huge strange sculpture/planters and we wondered what this was.

Then when I went to the restroom inside the lobby, this is what I found plus several other cases of dolls, etc.  I thought that was strange too.  Little did we know what was ahead.

The man was over 6 feet tall but most ceilings were so low.

 Sorry these are sidways.  It was an amazing view!

  Who could live with stuff like this in their house?

View from top of infinity room extention

 Look at all the ax marks on the wood.  Most of the constuction was very crude in the original house.

This one is on the side also

 Look at the wooden pegs connecting beams

This streets of yester year is still inside the house!  This thing just goes on and on.  There are actually 3 tours within the house in case you don't want to do it all in one day.

  It's hard to imagine size.  Look at people under model of Titanic.

This creature is wrapped around the whale.

 The whale is several stories high with a huge collection of model ships displayed in the walls around it.

 

 Do you remember how fun it was to read these as you rode down the highway?

  Many of the rooms had full walls that were animated music boxes, mostly of his designs.  Quite a site.

 The bows actually play across the strings

 This is the largest merry go round and it contains all kinds of creatures but no horses.  Remember this too is inside.

He started collecting these wooden horse and they cover the walls

The ceiling is covered in life-size angels