Swetsville Zoo

If you could take just one photo: Swetsville Zoo

You’re purring up the Harmony exit for Fort Collins, Colorado to partake in it’s seven award winning breweries when it catches your eye…was that? Yes, hon. It’s a dinosaur. For a taste of hops, turn west. For the kind of Americana only road tripping can provide (largest ball of twine anyone?), head east. Past the carnival turreted home of Bill Swets, the farmer cum folk artist, wind along the wooded path to discover scrap metal creatures of all sizes and professions, cartoonish contraptions, or picnic beneath a VW bug on stilts.

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Amidst Fort Collins’ corn fields and across from a brand new Walmart, stands a monument to individuality and creativity. The Swetsville Zoo is an odd array of car parts, computer screens, and other industrial detritus sculpted into dinosaurs and imaginative animals by folk artist Bill Swet. Bill built the “zoo” on the grounds of his own residence, itself a miniature replica of the Taj Majal. Walking the forested paths, you’re greeted by everything from an alien cowboy, to a pinocchio-nosed Bill Clinton, to a VW beetle reincarnated as a toothy spider. Swet’s humor is apparent in the sculptures themselves and in his self-styled guidebook which describes one towering creature as Puff the Dragon. “A lot of magic involved,” writes Swet, “six weeks to build.”

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