This Iowa Museum Is Home To The Coolest Matchstick Models

In Gladbrook, Iowa, resides a museum that is home to 75 incredibly detailed, incredibly intricate and life-like structures - all created from thousands upon thousands of matchsticks.

Iowa artist Patrick Acton has glued over 8.6 million ordinary matchsticks over the course of his creations, including his 13-foot long true-to-scale model of the battleship USS Iowa.

He's also known for his 12-foot lighted model of the Iowa State Capitol building that is iconic to Des Moines.

Matchstick Marvels models have been seen on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Home and Garden TV, PBS, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and RFD’s Small Town, Big Deal. Additionally, the models have been featured in magazines such as Highlights for Children, Reminisce, AAA Travel, Wood, The Iowan, Country America , Farm Bureau, and Workbench.

Currently, he's been working on building a replica of the iconic town square from the first Back To The Future movie. He's already completed the DeLorean model as well as many of the buildings.

It's taken Pat Acton 44 years to meticulously build all 75 of his models out of millions of the standard two-inch long matchsticks, and many of them are featured in museums around the world, as well as Ripley's Believe It or Not museums in North America, Australia, Asia, and Europe.

Watch this video and see some of the other impressive models Pat's made, like a replica Millennium Falcon, a plane, some birds, and a 1/3 replica of Dom Toretto's Charger from the Fast & Furious franchise.

You can visit the Matchstick Marvels Museum in Gladbrook any day from 1pm-5pm for just $5. The only days Pat doesn't open the museum are Easter and Thanksgiving.

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