Pyramid Ruins

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In the late 1970s the town of Bedford -- "The Limestone Capital of the World" -- tried to build a 95-foot-tall (one-fifth scale) limestone replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, and a 650-foot-long (some say 800-foot-long) limestone version of the Great Wall of China. The idea was to open them as a combined tourist attraction named "Limestone Tourist Park."

The town received $200,000 (or $700,000 -- no one seems clear on the facts any more) in federal money to begin the project, and work began. But Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, who at the time was promoting his "Golden Fleece Awards," got wind of the boondoggle in 1981 and blew the whistle. The grants dried up. The project collapsed. Senator Proxmire considered it the second greatest Fleece that he had ever uncovered. (#4 was a $1 million grant to preserve a Trenton, New Jersey sewer as a historical monument.)

A yellow metal gate blocks what used to be the road to it, stretched between limestone columns topped by small limestone step-pyramids, both of which have been truncated by past vandalisms. To the right, a horizontal limestone slab once held some sort of sign, now long gone. Huge hunks of limestone lie scattered among rusting trucks.

The remains of the pyramid are disappearing under trees and sticker bushes like an ancient burial mound. Behind this, dozens of limestone blocks lie in rows, possibly the raw material for the never-begun Great Wall.