In Spring Green, WI, stands The House On The Rock, a legendary tourist attraction and one of the Seven Wonders of Roadside America.
A hundred miles northwest is this thing.
On April 24, 1995, a 55-ton boulder suddenly rolled 400 feet down a cliff along the Mississippi river and plowed into the 2-bedroom house of Maxine and Dwight Anderson. When the dust settled the Anderson's found a huge, coin-shaped rock where their master bedroom used to be. The rock is still there today. John Burt, a local real estate investor, bought the house -- with the rock still firmly wedged inside it -- and turned it into a tourist attraction: The Rock In The House.
Unlike most other tourist attractions charging admission, The Rock In The House is run on the honor system. You park in the driveway, walk to the front door, and a series of handwritten notes tells you where to leave your money (it's only a dollar) and which doors to open to peek at the rock. We walk in, the TV is on, but nobody's home. If you don't pay, maybe a big rock will fall on you.
T-shirts and sweats are for sale, as are photos of the rock when it arrived. Just leave money for what you take. Clippings on the wall tell of other Fountain City natural disasters: floods, earthquakes, even another big rock that killed a Mrs. Dubler in a house that stood next to this one. There might have been soda for sale out of the fridge, but we weren't too interested in hanging around.
