The West Bend Grotto will host Customer Appreciation Events tomorrow.
“We want people to know that we appreciate their business that they have given to us in supporting the grotto in so many different ways, whether it’s volunteering, working,” Walker said. “…It’s just a good way to give back to our town and our surrounding communities,” said Rose Walker, Director of Operations at the Shrine of the Grotto of Redemption, the largest grotto in the U.S.
Walker said there’s been an increase in the number of visitors at the Grotto in recent years. Some stop for a few hours. Others set up in the Grotto’s campground, which is open from mid-April through mid-October. “I just had a call from a couple in Washington State that is coming through Iowa to tour,” Walker said. “They hear so many good things about Iowa that they want to see what Iow has to offer, which is just phenomenal.”
Walker expects about 40,000 people to visit the West Bend Grotto this year. “To experience the Grotto, people say that pictures don’t do it justice,” Walker said, “that you need to come and see it for yourself.”
Customer Appreciation Events at the Grott run from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow and include rock painting and a scavenger hunt as well as hot dogs and ice cream. The Grotto is on the National Register of Historic Places and was designed by a priest who arrived in West Bend in 1898 and worked on the Grotto for 56 years.
