Vining is a village in the northeastern part of Nidaros Township on the branch line of the Northern Pacific Railroad between Wadena Junction and Fergus Falls. In the fall of 1882, Ole and Anna Johnson, John, Jr. and Johanna Gysler, and Andrew and Anna Lund set out to have the townsite platted, and the town was officially incorporated in 1909. The town was originally named Lund, but the name was changed to Vining after Mark L. Vining, the station master at Wadena, when it was learned that another Lund post office already existed in Minnesota. John Gysler, Sr. had taken a claim on the land in 1874, established a store on his homestead to serve early settlers, and later built and operated the first general store in Vining. Born in Norway in 1819, Gysler was a Civil War veteran who enlisted in Company A, 15th Wisconsin Regiment, suffered frostbite during the war, lost the front halves of both feet, and was discharged in 1864. Vining later became known for the iron sculptures of welder and former construction foreman Ken Nyberg, who was born in January 1938 and grew up with very little. Using leftover scrap metal from job sites, Nyberg created sculptures from old lawnmower blades and other remnants. In 1989, he secretly built a 1,240-pound, 18-foot-tall Big Foot over more than two years, and after neighbors admired it, the sculpture was placed beside the town's main road. His later works, both large and small, spread across the Midwestern landscape, and in Vining they gradually formed Nyberg Sculpture Park, an outdoor gallery that includes whimsical pieces such as a dancing knife and spoon with arms and legs, a floating doorknob, giant pliers topped with a large cockroach, and a sculpture of his daughter Karen, a NASA astronaut who flew two missions to the International Space Station.