Grotto of the Redemption

In farm country where, as the shrine's history puts it, scarcely any type of rock is known, a priest spent decades assembling a mountain of stone, crystal and petrified wood. Father Paul Dobberstein, born in Germany in 1872, became pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Church in West Bend in 1898. The shrine says it is generally told that, critically ill with pneumonia as a seminarian, he promised to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary if he recovered. He spent more than a decade stockpiling rocks and stones, and the shrine dates the start of the actual building to 1912.

The shrine describes the result as a composite of nine separate grottos, each portraying a scene in the life of Christ, and as the largest man-made grotto in the world. Its geology page records specimens from many places: amethyst from Brazil and the Andes, dogtooth spar from Joplin, Missouri, quartz from Mt. Ida, Arkansas, and a 2,200-pound stalagmite from Carlsbad Caverns near the top of the Sermon on the Mount. A 300-pound amethyst is set into the back wall of the Christmas Chapel.