Immaculate Heart of Mary Queen of Peace

A 30-foot stainless-steel Virgin Mary reaches out one hand to visitors and, with the other, points the way across the grounds to a 33-foot Sacred Heart of Jesus at Trinity Heights, a Catholic shrine on the north side of Sioux City, Iowa. Trinity Heights says the Rev. Harold Cooper, then pastor of St. Joseph Church, conceived the statue around 1985 after seeing a 30-foot statue of the Virgin Mary in California and wanting something similar in the Midwest. Dale Lamphere was commissioned to sculpt it in 1990, and Trinity Heights says it was dedicated in 1993. The Sioux City Journal described Lamphere in 2017 as a nationally known sculptor from Spearfish, South Dakota, The Journal said Lamphere created both the Mary and the Sacred Heart statues; Trinity Heights says the Sacred Heart was placed in 1999.

The shrine stands on the grounds of the former Trinity College and a high school. The Journal reported that the old buildings were razed in 1989, and both it and Trinity Heights say the statue was placed on the spot where the Trinity College chapel had stood, which Trinity Heights says was unknown to the planners. The Journal gave the campus as 80 acres in 2017; Trinity Heights now describes 16 acres. Pathways around the statue lead to the 20 decades of the Rosary.