Petersen Rock Garden is one man’s backyard project gone haywire.

In a good way.

In 1935, Danish-born Rasmus Petersen began puttering around his yard, building this and that with rocks.

He’d arrived in Central Oregon in 1906, built a home, acquired some land and farmed it. Things went well and Petersen found himself with some free time on his hands.

Things went well with his free time, too.

”He did it as a hobby,” said his granddaughter, Susan Caward, who helps operate Petersen Rock Garden. ”He started out with a couple of places (where) he couldn’t get anything to grow. His friends and neighbors came by. They brought their friends and family and he just kept doing it.”

Before he died of a heart attack on August 3, 1952, Petersen had covered four of his 300 acres with castles, bridges, ponds and churches.

He built all of the structures himself, using stones he found within an 85-mile radius of his property. His building materials ranged from petrified wood, lava and obsidian to jasper, agate and thundereggs.

He fashioned big castles with moats and battlements and little churches with steeples. There’s an island fortress, an American flag and a rock-sculpted Statue of Liberty. The museum building and gift shop is even embellished with stone.

According to the garden’s brochure, Petersen always maintained that handling all the stones and boulders wasn’t nearly as difficult as farming the nearby fields, plowing and hauling off tons of rock every year.

Today, Petersen Rock Garden still gives off a funky, eccentric 1950s vibe with its hand-stenciled signs and honor-system admission box.

Peacocks roam free. So do jungle fowl, pheasants, quail, rabbits, ducks and chickens.

After you roam around outside for a while, be sure to check into the museum and gift shop. It’s stuffed to the rafters with polished rocks and fossils and petrified wood and thundereggs and arrowheads and jewelry.

When I was there, George Caward (Susan’s husband) took me straight to the ”City of Mineral Rock.” He turned out the lights and Rasmus Petersen’s miniature rock town glowed forth from behind a display window. Black lights, fluorescent minerals and a Lilliput city on a winter’s morning. It felt as if I were caught in a roadside attraction time warp.

According to George Caward, summertime is when the ponds are full of water, the fountains are spraying and the flowers are in bloom. Picnickers enjoy the shady grounds and the free-range parade.

But Petersen Rock Garden is open 365 days a year, and it can be a fun place to poke around on a winter’s day (Redmond is quite often free of snow this time of year). You can usually find George Caward restoring crumbling rock work or otherwise readying the place for the busier season.

He’d be glad to stop and chat a while.

From Bend, drive about nine miles north on Highway 97 and turn left on 61st Avenue. Turn left on Young Avenue, cross Canal Boulevard and turn right on 77th. Petersen Rock Garden is less than a mile up the road on the right. Admission is by donation at the gate. Suggested price is $3 for adults, $1.50 for ages 12 to 16 and 50 cents for ages 6 to 11. No charge for children under 6.

Contact: 382-5574.