REDMOND — Though it’s been here more than 30 years longer than Mt. Bachelor ski area, and predates Deschutes Brewery by more than 50, Petersen Rock Garden is today a low-profile tourist attraction, unfamiliar even to many locals.

Touring the rock garden with his family Saturday, Ed Busch ticked off a long list of local sites they’d visited in the 10 years since moving to Bend. Until now, the rock garden had always passed below their radar.

“It’s always great to see another piece of Central Oregon,” he said.

Trish Burson said she was slightly embarrassed to have never visited in 22 years as a local resident. Marveling at the geodes, obsidian and other rocks Rasmus Petersen collected and assembled into bridges, buildings and walls between 1935 and 1952, she wondered how he’d ever found the time.

Burson said she suspects there are many people like her, longtime locals who’ve never made the trip to see one of the region’s more curious curiosities.

“You never play tourist in your own backyard,” she said.

Once a roadside attraction complete with a cafe and a gift shop packed with polished stones, postcards and View-Master slide reels, the rock garden has been on a slow decline for a number of years. Starting earlier this year, a team of volunteers stepped in to clean up and restore the rock garden, and Saturday was the grand re-opening.

Over the din of dozens of squawking peacocks and a rock band warming up, Owen Evans explained the state of the rehabilitation effort.

A friend since childhood of Petersen’s granddaughter and rock garden owner Sue Caward, Evans took on the job of restoring the grounds, the buildings and Petersen’s rockwork in January. Since then, they’ve cleared yards upon yards of dead vegetation from the rock monuments, hauled away several trucks full of junk found stuffed away in the outbuildings, and held an estate sale to dispose of several items dating back to before Petersen’s death.

And they’re still not anywhere close to finished.

“It’s a huge effort,” Evans said. “Every time you clean up something, you find something else.”

What Petersen ultimately envisioned for his property is a mystery, Evans explained on a walk around the grounds. When he died at age 79, he was working on the last of three “islands” in the parking lot, Evans said, a series of small cabin-like structures perched on the hills around a lake of blue stones. Sketches Petersen drew of his ideas long ago disappeared, but his workshop remains surrounded by tons of unused rock, and filled with half-finished bridge spans and other structures.

Evans has big plans for the rock garden, though he expects it will take years to achieve them.

Once the grounds are restored, the loose or missing rocks secured or replaced, he’d like to reopen the cafe and gift shop, and reorganize the museum where hundreds of crystals, thundereggs, pieces of petrified wood and other rocks and minerals are on display in aging glass cases.

Petersen’s house could be remodeled into a bed and breakfast, he said, or a small amphitheater constructed to host concerts and other events. Maybe, if the right person could be found, new rockworks mimicking Petersen’s style could be built.

At its height, when traffic along the eastern edge of the Cascades traveled the Old Bend-Redmond Highway at the edge of Petersen’s farm, the rock garden drew upwards of 150,000 visitors a year. Similar museums, art installations and oddities dotted the roads around the country, Evans said, doing a brisk business luring in drivers looking for a good reason to get out of their cars.

Though the passage of time and the rise of the interstate highway system killed off most of the original roadside attractions, many live on, Evans said, and a still-sizable community of enthusiasts can be counted on to seek them out. Historical societies and preservationist groups have taken note, he said, and by this fall, he should know if Petersen Rock Garden has qualified for a place on the National Registry of Historic Places.

“Roadside Americana is reviving, they don’t want to lose these little gems, they’re preserving them.”

Caward said while Evans’ vision is ambitious, it’s possible, and the only future she can imagine for what her grandfather created.

“It takes time. It took time to get to where it was, it’ll take time to get it picked back up,” Caward said. “And we will get it picked up.”