The scrap-metal sculpture park a township tried to ban

Tom Lakenen quit drinking and needed something to do with his hands, so the Marquette ironworker started welding monsters and dinosaurs and political jokes out of scrap steel in his garage. Then he stood them in his front yard. Chocolay Township decided the figures counted as signs, which weren’t allowed there, and told him to take them down.

He did better than that. In 2003 he bought 37 acres along M-28, about fifteen miles east of Marquette, and moved the whole growing herd out where nobody could call it a zoning problem. He named it Lakenenland and has been adding to it ever since — more than a hundred welded sculptures now, some painted in loud colors, others left to rust into the woods. A loop drive and a walking trail thread past them, and the captions show a man with opinions: there are creatures from a child’s imagination and there are pointed jabs at politicians and bosses, side by side.

The part that surprises people is the price, which is nothing. Lakenenland is free, open 24 hours a day, every day. There’s a pavilion, a couple of fishing ponds, and a stage. In winter the place fills with snowmobilers, and Lakenen keeps a warming fire going with free hot chocolate. The same township that once called his art an illegal sign later named him its citizen of the year.

It’s the rare roadside attraction with no gate, no ticket booth, and no closing time — just a man’s scrap pile, grown into a forest of iron, sitting open by the highway because he wanted people to be able to wander through it whenever they felt like it.