Cracking the big time: A giant attraction for a nutcracker-happy town
The city of Luverne in southwest Minnesota has a unique plan to increase tourism: a 65-foot-tall nutcracker.
Luverne is already known for its nutcrackers. The city’ Rock County History Center is home to a collection of 6,000 of them, outnumbering the town’s population of just around 5,000 people.
The city hopes that leaning into its nutcracker fame with the new statue will help draw tourists. It will be the tallest in the world, outpacing the current Guinness World Record holder in Neusausen, Germany, by about 30 feet.
Vance Walgrave is spearheading the sculpture project. The nutcracker will stand in front of his gift shop, Those Blasted Things, less than a block off Interstate 90.
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He thinks the statue will bring the tourists.
“Usually if you can pull people off the interstate, they’re always going to have to go to the bathroom and then say, let’s eat lunch while we’re here, and let’s do this and let’s do that,” he said. “That’s what it’s designed for. It’s to attract people into the town.”
The city had floated the idea for the statue more than five years ago, Walgrave said. But finding the money and space for it took some time.
Walgrave liked the idea of having the statue outside his store, so he started a nonprofit called Just for Nuts to fundraise for it. By the time the pandemic hit, it had raised almost enough money — but then, prices for materials went up, and it took a few years to raise the rest.
Finding someone to build it was hard, too.
“There were a lot of fabricators that were immediately very interested, but when they heard how big we wanted it, they bailed out on us real quick,” Walgrave said.
Now, the statue is underway. An eight-foot-tall base stands outside his shop, ready for the nutcracker to be assembled on top. A fabricator in Utah is building the statue piece-by-piece and shipping it to Luverne. Walgrave said it will be standing sometime this spring.
The statue is modeled from classic nutcrackers but with a patriotic red, white and blue pattern. It will also have a working jaw, though operating it might prove tricky. Walgrave speculated that it might be better suited for watermelon cracking than nut cracking.
Walgrave is no stranger to creative business ideas. Those Blasted Things sells collectible rocks and knick-knacks, but also memorials for cemeteries.
“In a smaller community, if you’re having a retail business, you almost have to diversify to make it,” he said.
Walgrave thinks the enormity of this statue will catch the eyes of any passersby — even the nutcracker skeptics out there. A regular nutcracker might be nothing special, he admitted.
“But a huge Nutcracker like that, biggest one in the world, hey — wouldn’t you stop in and go see?” he said. “I know I would.”