Lemmon’s Towers of Petrified Wood
During the Depression, workers hauled fossils into a South Dakota town and built a block of spires, walls, and turrets.
Pointed towers of petrified wood rise above the sidewalk in Lemmon, South Dakota. Pieces of ancient trees were mortared together into spires, archways, and the walls of a small castle. The park occupies nearly a city block.
Hauling a Park into Town
Ole S. Quammen, a local businessman and amateur geologist, directed the construction from 1930 to 1932. Men collected petrified wood and other stone from the surrounding country and brought it back to Lemmon. At a time when paid work was scarce, building the park gave unemployed laborers a job.
Rough pieces project from the masonry, and irregular chunks narrow into slender pinnacles. Some of the towers reach about 20 feet high. The builders fitted the stone together to form structures that could stand through South Dakota winters.
The wood had become stone long before anyone collected it. Burial and mineral-bearing water can preserve the structure of a tree as its organic material is replaced or filled with minerals. The resulting fossil may retain traces of grain, bark, or growth rings, even though it no longer behaves like timber.
A Castle on Main Avenue
Quammen’s project gave those fragments a new arrangement. Instead of laying out a reconstructed forest, the builders used them as masonry, surrounding paths with walls and spires that visitors could walk among.
The city took ownership in 1954. Later repairs helped preserve a park whose narrow towers and exposed mortar spend every winter outdoors. The castle and museum buildings hold local historical collections, while the surrounding structures remain part of the streetscape.
At the entrance, a sign set into the fossil-studded masonry directs visitors toward the park and museum. Beyond it, the same rough material continues through the block in dozens of different shapes.
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Sources & photograph
Adapted from the Hidden Here story catalog. Explore the historical records behind this story.
