West Bend, IA

West Bend is an Iowa village straddling the Kossuth-Palo Alto county line in a broad stretch of northwestern Iowa farmland. The railroad arrived in the early 1880s, and the town was first called Ives after the line’s president before residents chose West Bend for the nearby bend in the Des Moines River. The village’s famous landmark came later: Father Paul Matthias Dobberstein began building the Grotto of the Redemption in 1912, using minerals, petrified materials, and stones gathered from around the world.

ATTRBen Franske / CC BY-SA 4.0

Nine connected grottos now occupy a full city block beside Saints Peter and Paul Church, drawing visitors into a place otherwise surrounded by farm roads and level fields. West Bend-Mallard Community School District serves the area, and local recreation includes a swimming pool, golf, and community events. The former rail line still threads the landscape, but the Grotto is what puts West Bend on most travel maps. It is a county-line village with a working school, a rural Iowa setting, and one extraordinary piece of devotional architecture.