About Lemmon Petrified Wood Park & Museum
Downtown Lemmon contains a landscape that looks as if someone tried to build a fantasy kingdom out of fossils. The Lemmon Petrified Wood Park & Museum fills a city block with arches, towers, pyramids, pillars, buildings, and other structures assembled from enormous quantities of petrified wood, fossilized grass, stone, and rounded boulders.
The project was created by local businessman and amateur geologist Ole S. Quammen, who began planning it with his son David in the 1920s. Construction provided work during the difficult early years of the Great Depression, while also gathering local geological material into one spectacular display. National Register documentation describes thousands of tons of petrified material used throughout the park, including several thousand tons of petrified and agatized wood.
The result is less like a normal geology exhibit and more like a handmade stone environment. Petrified logs become walls. Fossilized material is stacked into strange monuments. One structure resembles a miniature castle. The museum building itself incorporates petrified wood, and the park’s collection turns a natural process that usually appears one specimen at a time into architecture.
The City of Lemmon describes it as the largest petrified wood park in the world. The museum operates seasonally, typically from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Even among America’s many rock gardens and fossil displays, this one is difficult to confuse with anything else. It is a geological collection, folk-art landscape, Depression-era public project, and roadside spectacle occupying the same strange block.