Dr. Evermor’s ‘Junkyard of Dreams’

Posted on June 19, 2010

Sauk County, WI – Before there was steampunk, there was Dr. Evermor, an artist whose scrap metal sculpture garden is something from the set of a Tim Burton film. Across from the Badger Ammunition Plant on Highway 12 is Dr. Evermor has created an industrial landscape Wired magazine aptly dubbed “a junkyard of dreams.”

Evermor began building these curious creatures and magical machines in 1983. Dozens of creepy birds and giant insects populate the property, which is hidden from the highway, and numerous imaginative machines – with names like the Overlord Master Control Tower and the Celestial Lightening Ear – form the core of this world. But his crowning achievement is the Forevertron, which, at more than 300 tons and 50-feet high, is the worlds largest scrap metal sculpture.

While it’s easy to discern the avian forms, insect shapes and, to a lesser extent, the fantastical machines, it’s more fun trying to identify their component parts, an inventive mixture of scrap metal, lightening rods, voltage boxes, gears, springs and historic junk, including the decontamination chamber from the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

It’s too bad that Dr. Evermor, who no longer lives on the property, isn’t around to share the stories behind his peculiar world.