Built in 1935. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
From the record
“Petersen Rock Garden, formerly Petersen's Rock Garden and also known as the Petersen Rock Gardens, is a rock garden and museum on 4 acres (1.6 ha), located between the cities of Bend and Redmond in Deschutes County, Oregon, United States. Rasmus Petersen, a Danish immigrant who settled in Central Oregon in the early 1900s, began constructing the garden in 1935 using rocks he found within an 85-mile (137 km) radius of his family home.”
Wikipedia article Petersen Rock Garden, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 51 National Register listings published here for Deschutes County · listed in 2013 · category: District · built in 1935.
National Register reference number. 13000859 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
118 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 118 fires within 5 miles of Petersen Rock Garden
between 1992 and 2020, burning about 149 acres in total. 88 started naturally. 4 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Natural
88
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
9
Recreation and ceremony
7
Arson/incendiarism
4
Equipment and vehicle use
2
Debris and open burning
2
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Other causes
1
Fireworks
1
Railroad operations and maintenance
1
Smoking
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
64 workings within 5 miles of Petersen Rock Garden: 35 past producers, 28 producers, 1 unknown.
28 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Dimension, Volcanic Materials, Pumice. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Redmond, the town this property stands in, in 17 storm reports between 1998 and 2023: 8 hail, 2 lightning, 2 thunderstorm wind, 2 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A powerful storm moved through the Deschutes County Fair injuring at least four people, flipping a large tent, and lifting an inflated laser tag game into a tree. A 40-by-40-foot tent flipped over and struck two people with 2 to 3 inch pipes, one went to the hospital. Two young men were playing in a 900 pound laser tag "bag" when a gust of wind picked up the balloon-like structure, with the men inside, and threw them into a tree. One of the young men received a bloody nose. The owner of the laser tag game estimated equipment losses as high as 100,000 dollars. Vendors' displays also were blown over and merchandise was damaged.
Lightning struck a home in Redmond damaging a portion of the roof. Other lightning strikes nearby caused power outages to around 2000 people throughout the towns of Bend and Sisters.
A strong dust devil blew a piece of metal roofing into power lines at a local furniture store. The dust devil tore through Umatilla Park and Sports Complex, destroying five baseball dugouts. Sagebrush and papers were reported to the height of power poles, and power was locally lost for three hours.
A lightning strike knocked out communication and computer systems at the Redmond City Hall and Police Department. Phone lines were repaired on the night of August 20, however some of the computer components were still down a week later.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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