Towns all around America erected memorials to the young men who never returned home following World War I, and the majority of these were straightforward bronze or stone structures. A German-born parish priest in the southwest Wisconsin community of Dickeyville began in a similar manner and continued. In the years that followed, the churchyard of Holy Ghost Parish developed into a garden of concrete shrines and grottos covered in glass, shells, and stones after Father Matthias Wernerus constructed a traditional memorial for three local men who had lost their lives in the conflict. It is still one of the most well-known examples of outdoor folk art in the Midwest and is now called the Dickeyville Grotto.
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