Entry No. 44 — the Des Moines file — filed under: offbeat-museum
Matchstick Marvels Museum
“a retired art teacher … has been gluing wooden matchsticks together since the 1980s”
Somewhere in a town of ~1,000 people on the Iowa prairie, a retired art teacher named Patrick Acton has been gluing wooden matchsticks together since the 1980s — and the result is one of the genuinely strangest small museums in America. His 80 completed models (nearly 10 million matchsticks total) include a 13-foot USS Iowa, a six-foot Minas Tirith, the Millennium Falcon, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Space Shuttle Challenger, and — unveiled April 2026 — a nine-foot Cinderella Castle made from 607,000 matchsticks and 2,800 hours of labor. Atlas Obscura, Roadside America, and Wikipedia all flag it; most Des Moines residents have never been. It's the kind of place you stumble on and immediately need to tell everyone about.
The move: Drive the 70 miles northeast on a weekday afternoon, arrive before 3pm so you have time to slowly circle every model and ask the volunteer docent which one took the most matchsticks — then grab pie somewhere in Tama County on the way back.
📍 Before you go There's no grand standalone museum facade to hunt for — the collection sits inside Gladbrook's City Hall and movie-theatre building on the northwest corner of Gould and 2nd Streets, so navigate toward City Hall in this tiny prairie town 70 miles northeast of Des Moines. It's seasonal, generally open spring through late fall and closed over the deep-winter months, making a warm-weather afternoon your reliable window. The operation is volunteer-run and modest, so bring patience for a small-town pace and a backup plan. Handily, that same building reportedly houses the town's movie theatre if you want a reason to linger in Gladbrook.
- 📍 Gladbrook (70 miles NE of Des Moines)
- 💸 $
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Indoors
Where: 319 2nd St, Gladbrook, IA 50635
Hours: Added 2026-06-09 — confirm current hours before you go.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: Official site · Atlas Obscura · Roadside America · timesrepublican.com
last checked: 2026-06-09