Wonder Cave at Grotto Shrine - Rudolph, WI
N 44° 29.969 W 089° 48.116
16T E 277248 N 4931170
The Wonder Cave was completed in 1957 and is part of the Rudolph Grotto Shrine complex. It is located in Rudolph, WI.
Waymark Code: WM2NVB
Location: Wisconsin, United States
Date Posted: 11/27/2007
Views: 127
There is a small fee for admission.
From the Wonder Cave web site:
The north end of the garden is dominated by a man-made mountain of gossan rock concealing the labyrinth of the Wonder Cave. What began in 1935 as a grotto scene of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane grew into the far more complex and ambitious Wonder Cave by the time it was finished in 1957.
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On top of a low hill, behind St. Philips Church, are the sprawling grounds of the Grotto Gardens and Wonder Cave. The gardens are as large as an entire block of a town which consists of only several dozen.
Like many other grottoes and religious art projects, the Rudolph Grotto was a fulfillment of a promise that Father Philip Wagner made to the Virgin Mary in thanks for healing from a debilitating exhaustion he suffered while studying for the priesthood in Europe. Father Wagner received his cure while at the shrine at Lourdes, so it follows that in thanks he would build a place of pilgrimage himself. After several inexperienced attempts at construction, Father Wagner completed the first construction at Rudolph, the wayside Lourdes Grotto shrine, in 1928.
All the rock constructions at the Rudolph Grotto are built with a distinctive reddish rock known as gossan, which is rich in iron and infused minerals, and is abundant in the area. Broken and melted glass is used as decorative accents at the grotto, but not pottery or other cast-off materials. Instead, the rough red rocks cover everything in the grotto, their textures and sizes (from pebble sized to an enormous 78-ton boulder) provide the interest and drama of the grotto structures.