The House on the Rock

My road trip to the most American place in America

City pages

Spring Green, Wisconsin - What do you get when you combine one wealthy man’s fantasy, an eccentric architect, your dad’s basement, and a dash of mythology? According to my friend Josh, you get the most American place in America.

So, when my buddy Joshua pitched a road trip to The House on the Rock for the Fourth of July, I acquiesced.

“You’ll love House on the Rock,” he says with an air of persuasion rather than fact. "It's the best American monument because it represents both the good and bad of America.”

A brief bit of history: The House on the Rock, which opened to the public in the late 1950s, is the brainchild of Alex Jordan Jr., an eccentric recluse who, legend has it, built the house to spite Frank Lloyd Wright.

Seventy years later, the house is having a second renaissance, thanks to STARZ show American Gods (based on the Neil Gaiman book of the same name), which filmed its season-two premiere at the location.

While the show has brought new fans, The House on the Rock already has a sizable cult following, with hordes of visitors gleefully indulging in a five-hour tour inside the windowless, maze-like structure throughout the year.

I ask Josh how many times he has been to this place. "Five or six times, I think," he replies.

Turns out he’s one of those cult followers.

Upon arrival I am unimpressed.

First of all, The House on the Rock - at least in name - isn't exactly a stroke of linguistic genius. It's quite literally a house ... on a rock.

The highly manicured landscaping and carefully trimmed topiaries don't exactly conjure whimsy. However, the endless maze of Bavarian-style covered bridges leading up to the house offered some brief comedic relief - the low wooden ceilings forcing Josh to curl his 6-foot-3 frame into the shape of a cooked shrimp to avoid knocking himself out on a low-hanging beam.

It was after that fifteen minutes of tunnel marching (and Josh's newly acquired scoliosis diagnosis), that I learn my first lesson at The House on the Rock: there are no shortcuts. Not outside, not inside, not anywhere.

Dehydrated and in desperate need of a chiropractor, Josh and I finally arrive at our first stop of the 4th of July insanity tour: the Infinity Room.

Its claim to fame? It's completely unsupported - a fact that becomes increasingly apparent the closer you inch toward the pointed end ... or when a light breeze kicks up on either side. Another unpleasant feature is that the entire structure is encased in glass, turning it into a steamy little sauna that, if you're lucky, is packed with other sweaty weirdos.

Soak in the sunlight while you can, because it's the last you'll see for the next five hours.

What lies beyond the Infinity Room leads me straight to my second impression: What the actual fuck.

If you enjoy creeping around inside a stranger's bizarre home, The House on the Rock is the place for you. Walk a few feet inside the windowless foyer and you'll encounter a spiral wooden staircase covered in Genghis Khan carvings, a stained-glass table that suspiciously resembles the Mortal Kombat logo, a room packed with clown-themed piggy banks, and several mind-numbingly dull chambers lined with carpet-covered walls.

But what begins as a quirky little voyeuristic novelty quickly spirals into a five-hour fever dream.

Minutes stretch into hours. There are no windows, no clocks, barely any other visitors, and almost no staff. Just room after room after room of unapologetic crap.

There are rooms filled with doll collections, glass cases crammed with antique medical equipment, a pyramid of elephants, a bunch of crown jewels, a 39-ton steam traction tractor, a life-sided horse-drawn hearse, and a bunch of self-playing saxophones. Oh, and let’s not forget the 200-foot paper mâché whale battling a giant squid. I could go on. Really, I could.

At times, the House feels like a supersized version of my dad’s basement. In fact, I notice a few items that actually exist in my father’s basement - including a bust of a sailor smoking a wooden pipe and some weird Arabian masks.

And then … there’s the grotto.

With its burnt orange walls and matted shag-covered sofas, the grotto radiates pure 1970s porn set energy. Hang some medieval cookware alongside a stained-glass light fixture, and suddenly you’ve stumbled into an aesthetic that can only be described as Handmaiden cosplay meets TGI Friday’s.

Josh and I decide this is a fantastic backdrop for his next Tinder profile pic.

The carousel was my favorite part — partly because of its jaw-dropping size (it’s the largest indoor carousel in the world!) and partly because it’s conveniently located right next to the exit.

Unfortunately, the spinning menagerie of zebras, dragons, and bizarre human-animal hybrids is fenced off by an obnoxious metal barrier, making the topless mermaids and centaurs sadly unrideable.

As I take in all this random chaos, I can’t help but wonder: why would anyone spend a lifetime accumulating such a stupidly massive pile of junk? What first feels like a quirk collection of crap reveals itself as something deeper.

And then, it hits me.

The House on the Rock isn't just a hoarder's heaven — it’s a full-blown shrine to consumerism, capitalism, and the bottomless desire to own a bunch of crap for the sake of owning a bunch of crap.

Josh was right. The House on the Rock really is the most American place in America.