Minnesota town now boasts world’s tallest nutcracker
A town in the US now boasts the world’s tallest nutcracker, Verne the Patriot, standing at more than 65ft.
The quirky landmark, located off Interstate 90, was unveiled at an event in Luverne, Minnesota.
The town has more nutcrackers than people, and Verne has already boosted local tourism since he was completed three weeks ago.
Outside a quirky rock shop in the town’s centre, hundreds of people gathered for a weekend ribbon cutting where the nutcracker’s name and exact height were revealed to a crowd that was later served red, white and blue biscuits and slushies.
“Please welcome our newest Luverne resident, Verne the Patriot,” Katie Walgrave announced to cheers.
It stands 65ft and seven-and-a-half inches tall, with the pedestal pushing Verne an additional 9ft (2.7 metres) over the surrounding prairie, according to Ms Walgrave.
That is almost twice the height of a 33ft (10-metre) tall nutcracker in Neuhausen, Germany, that Guinness World Records currently has ranked as the largest.
Ms Walgrave, who runs the rock shop called Those Blasted Things with her family, said that since the nutcracker was completed in mid-June, customers have quadrupled.
Other local businesses have reported more traffic too.
“Our goal is to have something that’s different and that you won’t see anywhere else. And so that’s what we have here,” she said.
Given the association between nutcrackers and Tchaikovsky’s namesake holiday ballet, the July unveiling seemed a bit out of season.
But nutcrackers are a year-round obsession in Luverne, which also hosts a Nutcracker Fest every summer.
It all traces back to Betty Mann, 96, and a trip that she made to a Cracker Barrel in January 2001 after her daughter and husband had recently died.
“I said to my daughter-in-law, ‘I had a hard Christmas and I’ve always wanted a wooden nutcracker. I’m buying myself a belated Christmas present’,” she recalled.
Ms Mann got her first in the Cracker Barrel’s gift shop.
She kept buying them, and Ms Mann’s collection eventually ballooned to more than 2,500 nutcrackers.
In 2016, Ms Mann donated them to the town’s historical society, where she was president, hoping to draw more visitors to its museum.
Others also started donating and today, Luverne’s 7,554 nutcrackers outnumber its roughly 5,000 residents.
No two are the same.
A few years ago, when the city brought in a tourism expert to work out how to lure more visitors, he concluded “we’re crazy if we don’t utilise the nutcracker collection”, mayor Patrick Baustian said.
A city committee came up with the idea of building the world’s tallest nutcracker, and so Verne was conceived.
It was timed perfectly to arrive as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary.
The nutcracker was several years in the making, with the pieces crafted in Utah and assembled in Luverne.
The head and hat had to be lifted on with a crane three weeks ago, completing the structure.
It cost around 600,000 dollars, and was funded by donations and grants, Ms Walgrave said.
John Hawkinson of Lakeville, Minnesota, surprised his wife Francine with a trip to Luverne (nearly 200 miles away) after a house fire last month destroyed her collection of nearly 300 nutcrackers.
Many represented times from their life together – a nutcracker resembling a sailor for Mr Hawkinson’s time in the navy, and matching bride and groom nutcrackers for their marriage.
“Betty started her collection as a way of dealing with grief,” Mr Hawkinson said.
“We came down here out of loss as well… I thought that was kind of a full circle moment.”
Luverne is about 30 miles from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and about 200 miles from Minneapolis.
One of its other claims to fame is being a setting for the second season of the TV show Fargo.
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