Neo-Wheelism Rusty Artifacts Become Rustic Art As Palouse Farmer Creates Fence By Bolting Together A Circle Of Circles

Iron wheels and gears, forged in Midwestern foundries or handmade in Palouse farm shops, become rusty art under the calloused hands of Steve Dahmen.

Dahmen, 76, has spent the last 25 years welding and bolting together hundreds of feet of fence, all made of old wheels, gears and other round parts from farm machinery. The resulting fence, 4 to 6 feet high, rings his farmhouse and three acres of pasture in Uniontown, pop. 282.

“We think of it as a sculpture: The history of wheels,” said Dahmen’s wife, Junette. At last count, there were 1,004 wheels and gears in the fence.

The fence started small. On a whim, Steve Dahmen built a simple gate, made of large wheels welded side by side. It looked nice, the Dahmens decided, and kept the cattle in just fine.

Thus inspired, Steve Dahmen set to work. He tore out his wood-and-wire fencing and began replacing it.

To come up with the raw material - steel wheels - the couple turned to their friends and took out ads in local papers. They paid $5 to $20 per wheel, depending on size.

Farmers dredged their junk piles, emerging with wheels from manure spreaders and ancient steam-driven tractors. A Lewiston junkyard had baby carriage wheels, caster wheels and sewing machine wheels. Mining machine wheels came from the Idaho mountains.

In Deary, Idaho, Steve Dahmen said, the couple bought an old junk collector’s estate: bottle collections, horse tack, “and lots and lots of wheels.”

Some wheels just turned up during plowing or digging. Tom Schultheis of Genesee, Idaho, unearthed a 6-foot-diameter wheel while digging a basement. Nobody knows what it was from, but it, too, was added to the fence.

Today, all the wheels are rusty, and the older sections of fence are becoming covered with lichens. The Dahmens have no intention of painting their creation.

“A gallon of paint wouldn’t go very far,” said Steve Dahmen, eyeing the hundreds of feet of fence.

“Painting those wheels would make it a cutie-pie craft thing,” said Junette Dahmen. “This is the way they used to be.”

The unique fence still does a good job of keeping in cattle, the couple says, and looks pretty in long afternoon shadows or covered in fresh snow.

“I wonder, when we’re gone, what will happen to this fence,” said Junette Dahmen. “The next person that gets this place might not want it. I often think about that.”

Although few might want to own such a fence, many want to look at it. Gawkers often stop on the nearby highway to take photos. A Seattle photographer brings his photo students out twice a year.

A nearby high school class posed on the fence for their class picture. So did the Lewis-Clark State College basketball team. When the fence was about half-finished, Steve Dahmen said, a Californian stopped by and offered to buy it.

So many people have inquired about the peculiar fence, in fact, Junette Dahmen wrote a four-page brochure about it.

“Tour groups stop here,” she said. “They call ahead, and I stand out there and hand out my brochures. I should sell hamburgers or coffee or something.”

The Dahmens say they like the attention, and they have dozens of photographs of themselves and their fence, sent back by tourists from Europe, Japan and throughout the United States.

A photo of their very fat cat, Zeus, turned up in a bank calendar last year, courtesy of one of the Seattle photography students.

The biggest problem now, the couple said, is what to do with the leftover wheels.

“We still have quite a few left,” said Junette Dahmen. “And we have nothing left to fence.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo