This southwest Minnesota town is building a world-record nutcracker

LUVERNE, Minn. — This town in the southwest corner of Minnesota may soon crack the record for the tallest nutcracker in the world.

Luverne, nestled near the South Dakota border, is building a 65-foot-tall version of the famous holiday icon, in the hope that seeing a giant Christmas-themed soldier will give drivers on I-90 a reason to stop for a visit.

“You’ve got to be known for something,” said Vance Walgrave, who has been working on efforts to build the colossal nutcracker on his property for seven years.

Luverne, population 5,000, already boasts more nutcrackers than people. Most of them are housed at the Rock County History Center downtown, which receives anywhere from 500 to 700 visitors a month.

A massive nutcracker could help boost those numbers. So far, the emerging giant exists as two black boots, each 14-feet-tall and weighing about 1,400 pounds, rising from the prairie. The nutcracker’s legs arrived over the weekend and are waiting to be installed next spring, Walgrave, 74, said Monday.

When it’s finished, the nutcracker will stretch to the height of roughly a five-story building and look like a massive soldier spangled in red, white and blue. From its perch next to Walgrave’s rock shop, Those Blasted Things, it will greet drivers heading west on the interstate. Made of polyurethane foam, it will be coated in a tough-as-nails truck bed liner material, and supported by a spine made from a repurposed gas station pole.

The hope is for the nutcracker’s body and head to arrive in spring and be assembled in time for the town’s Hot Dog Nite next July, Walgrave said, adding that tourists have already come to take pictures with the giant boots.

Luverne’s nutcracker dreams began with Betty Mann.

“I’m the crazy old lady who started the whole thing,” said Mann, 94, as she walked through a collection of her nutcrackers that included versions that were firefighters, pirates and Minnesota Vikings.

After losing her husband and her oldest daughter in 2000, Mann’s found some solace in buying a $6 wooden nutcracker at a Cracker Barrel that Christmas. That one purchase sparked another, leading to a collection that now numbers over 6,452 nutcrackers on display at the history center.

In 2017, the town hired a marketing expert, who suggested Luverne highlight Mann’s nutcracker collection to boost tourism. About 30 miles from Sioux Falls, the town often sees visitors and their dollars bypassing them all together.

Some in Luverne opposed going all-in on nutcrackers, fearing it would be embarrassing or that the 65-foot-tall statute would be an eyesore, said Scott Viessman, a councilmember whose ward includes the site of the nutcracker.

But over time, the town’s business and governmental leaders came to support the idea, on the basis that they should be in favor of any idea, more or less, promoting the vitality of the community, Viessman said.

On a recent drive through Luverne, the town seemed to have fully embraced the nutcracker theme. There are sculptures of them on street corners, nutcracker images on businesses, even a nutcracker scavenger hunt over the holidays.

“I think we are getting to be known for nutcrackers,” Mann said with a smile.

Building the 65-foot-tall nutcracker, the largest addition to the town’s collection, hasn’t been without its challenges. The pandemic caused delays and sent costs soaring to a projected half a million dollars, Walgrave said. Construction is funded through donations to a non-profit, Just for Nuts, which has raised $350,000, including a $50,000 award from the Grand Rapids-based Blandin Foundation, he said.

Walgrave remains determined to see his giant nutcracker standing tall and inviting visitors to his town.

“We figured if we’re going to do it, we might as well do it big,” he said.

The nutcracker will actually be able to crack nuts when it’s finished, Walgrave added. The reason it has to have a working jaw is so shorter and therefore lesser nutcrackers don’t get to steal Luverne’s thunder, he said.

“We haven’t figured out who’s going to be able to crawl up there to throw something in his mouth,” Walgrave added.

There is one part of his plan that he’s had to dial back. “I wanted to make it big enough that we could crush cars and he could spit them out, but I was shot down on that one,” Walgrave said.