Fireworks Country Store

Locals know it as the “Big Blue Barn,” an appropriately impossible-to-miss landmark along Highway 29 where the shelves are stocked with things designed to light up the night.

Wittenberg itself owes much of its beginning to Reverend E.J. Homme, who arrived in the area in 1879 and helped establish the community. A few years later, in 1882, he founded a home for the aged and an orphanage – institutions whose successors continue serving the area today. More than a century later, one of Wittenberg’s most conspicuous roadside landmarks caters to an entirely different sort of celebration.

Inside Fireworks Country Store, shoppers can browse everything from sparklers and fountains to the sort of colorful displays destined for Fourth of July finales, wedding receptions and New Year’s countdowns. Housed inside its enormous blue barn, the store has become the kind of roadside attraction that’s nearly as memorable as whatever eventually gets launched from its shelves.

It’s an appropriately eccentric addition to a small Wisconsin town: part country store, part roadside spectacle, and entirely difficult to drive past without wondering what exactly is inside the Big Blue Barn.