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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVerne the Patriot, a nutcracker sculpture, is unveiled in Luverne, Minn., Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo\/Sarah Raza)<\/p>\n
Outside a quirky rock shop in the town\u2019s center, hundreds of people gathered for a weekend ribbon cutting where the nutcracker\u2019s name and exact height were revealed to a crowd that was later served red, white and blue cookies and slushies.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease welcome our newest Luverne resident, Verne the Patriot,\u201d Katie Walgrave announced to cheers.<\/p>\n
It stands 65 feet and 7 1\/2 inches tall, with the pedestal pushing Verne an additional 9 feet (2.7 meters) over the surrounding prairie, according to Walgrave. That\u2019s almost twice the height of a 33-foot (10-meter) tall nutcracker in Neuhausen, Germany, that Guinness World Records currently has ranked as the largest.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to have something that\u2019s different and that you won\u2019t see anywhere else. And so that\u2019s what we have here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Given the association between nutcrackers and Tchaikovsky\u2019s 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 \u201cNutcracker Fest\u201d every summer.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said to my daughter-in-law, \u2018I had a hard Christmas and I\u2019ve always wanted a wooden nutcracker. I\u2019m buying myself a belated Christmas present,\u2019\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
She got her first in the Cracker Barrel\u2019s gift shop. She kept buying them, and Mann\u2019s collection eventually ballooned to more than 2,500 nutcrackers. In 2016, she donated them to the town\u2019s historical society, where she was president, hoping to draw more visitors to its museum.<\/p>\n
Others also started donating and today, Luverne\u2019s 7,554 nutcrackers outnumber its roughly 5,000 residents. No two are the same.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, when the city brought in a tourism expert to figure out how to lure more visitors, he concluded \u201cwe\u2019re crazy if we don\u2019t utilize the nutcracker collection,\u201d Mayor Patrick Baustian said.<\/p>\n
A city committee came up with the idea of building the world\u2019s tallest nutcracker, and so Verne was conceived. It was timed perfectly to arrive as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It cost around $600,000, and was funded by donations and grants, Walgrave said.<\/p>\n
John Hawkinson of Lakeville, Minnesota, surprised his wife, Francine, with a trip to Luverne (nearly 200 miles, or 321 kilometers, away) after a house fire last month destroyed her collection of nearly 300 nutcrackers. Many represented times from their life together \u2014 a nutcracker resembling a sailor for John\u2019s time in the Navy, and matching bride and groom nutcrackers for their marriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetty started her collection as a way of dealing with grief,\u201d John Hawkinson said Saturday. \u201cWe came down here out of loss as well. \u2026 I thought that was kind of a full circle moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luverne is about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and about 200 miles (322 kilometers) from Minneapolis. One of its other claims to fame is being a setting for the second season of the TV show \u201cFargo.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUVERNE, Minn. (AP) \u2014 Crossing the open farmland of southwestern Minnesota, you\u2019ll encounter an otherworldly sight: a massive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-816444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}