Gary Greff is transforming his hometown of Regent into the "metal art capital of the world." His vehicle for the journey is the inchoate "Enchanted Highway": a series of four (out of a planned 10) colossal metal sculptures on the two-lane county road connecting Regent to the interstate 30 miles north. Greff's aim is for the Enchanted Highway to eclipse the "western" town of Medora, complete with its "pitchfork fondues" -- every summer evening, folks gather on a bluff and fork slabs of steak into kettles of boiling cooking oil -- as the premier tourist attraction in the state.

If you want to make Greff cringe, call him an artist. Though he receives grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the state arts council, Greff considers himself an entrepreneur. So long as the temperature stays above zero, he can be found on the side of a prairie road, welding abandoned oil wells into sculpture -- what his funders classify as "folk art." Though his lifestyle is as austere as any bohemian's, Greff hardly fits the starving artist stereotype.

At 51, this retired school teacher lives in a trailer, does seeding work for a farmer each spring and makes it through the winter with the help of state fuel assistance, groceries brought to him by his parents and the bones his brothers throw him, quite literally, in the form of meat from their nearby ranch. "My ends don't meet very often," Greff laughs.

In addition to the grasshopper, Greff's Enchanted Highway offers a flock of four-story pheasants in various pecking poses, a family of tin people (soon to talk) and everyone's favorite rough-riding imperialist (and former state resident), Teddy Roosevelt, on horseback. Each sculpture site includes a small parking lot and a picnic table. Greff wants to make the highway family friendly and is paving the way for what he hopes will be a metal-art theme park complete with rides and a metal golf course.

Decorated at three-mile intervals, the highway capitalizes on one of North Dakota's greatest resources: space. The view from any of the four sculptures is not of strip malls or convenience stores; the view is not much of anything. Such spaciousness abets the illusion, however brief, that maybe towering pheasants do frolic in Regent, their very own home on the range.

Greff was a visionary even before he created the sculptures. The manufacture of "tearless" onions was his first entrepreneurial venture. According to Greff, the pre-sliced onions could be jarred and stored for up to three months, similar to pre-minced garlic. The product was tested and approved in Canada, received attention from CNN and "Good Morning America" and spent several months on grocery shelves in Minneapolis. Unfortunately, Greff did not have the capital necessary to market the product, and he abandoned the venture in favor of the demands of the highway (though he still holds the patent).

North Dakota was one of three states to decline in population during the otherwise booming '90s. Regent once had two grocery stores and three bars, and it was common for farming families to have 10 children. "This state has always relied solely on agriculture, and we failed to respond quick enough when we saw that it wasn't working anymore," Greff says. "It became clear that my small town was going to be dead if I didn't do something."

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