Lemmon, SD

Tonight we are in Lemmon, SD. We had a lovely visit to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, then drove down US 85 to Rte 12 and over to Lemmon. It is late and I don't have time for an extensive post tonight, but here are a couple of photos:

Theodore Roosevelt N.P.

another view in TRNP

Petrified wood park in Lemmon, SD - a totally weird, amazing place

More on this later!

We took a very nice evening walk around Lemmon and ran into this park. It was created about when I was born - a depression era creation. It is totally unique. Here's an article:

Petrified Wood Park

"Lemmon, a town along the upper reaches of South Dakota, is justly proud of their Petrified Wood Park. Bigger than the classic post cards suggest, the tourist attraction fills an entire city block in the heart of downtown. Recent renovations and careful maintenance make this one of the better manicured rock sculpture parks.

 

Petrified Wood Park was built from 1930-32 by town men under the command of visionary Ole S. Quammen. "Thirty to forty otherwise unemployed men received sustenance during this period," explains a sign at the site. Quammen, an amateur geologist, had the men scavenge rocks and fossils from the vicinity and haul them back to Lemmon. Their labors yielded a castle, a wishing well, a waterfall, the Lemmon Pioneer Museum, and hundreds of pile sculptures-- all made of petrified wood.

The park became city property in 1954 when it was donated by Quammen's heirs. A plaque honors "Ole S. Quammen, father of Mrs. Harry C. Olson, the creator and donor of this, the world's largest petrified wood park of its kind." In 2002, extensive repairs and renovations restored the park to its Depression Era glory. While we were there, someone official looking was watering the grass between the rock cones.

 

A hundred conical sculptures are spread around the park at sizes up to 20-ft. tall. Some are made from petrified wood and others from spherical "cannonballs" -- round rocks from North Dakota's Cannonball River. The tree effect adds to the eerie illusion of a petrified forest, especially since it's artificially constructed in this mostly treeless region of the northern plains. The "trees" are decorated with Christmas lights for an annual holiday "Fantasyland" display.

A building referred to as "the Castle" was crafted from a variety of petrified wood and thousands of pounds of petrified dinosaur and mammoth bones. Inside a room with a gate and spires, dinosaur bones masoned into interior walls"

Lemmon is, or was, also home to Kathleen Norris, theologian and author of Dakota, Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace and other  fine works. The town as it presents itself today, does not appear to be a place that would be interested in the things she has written. But of course that may be a mis-apprehension.