Lamar's gas station built from petrified wood

Drive into Lamar from the north, where US 50 and US 287 meet, and you pass a small building on Main Street that looks like it was stacked from rough, gray logs. Look closer and the logs are stone. The walls are petrified wood, and the place started life in 1932 as a gas station.

A lumber dealer named W. G. Brown built it. The story goes that the wood was gathered from the plains south of Lamar, where ancient trees had slowly turned to rock over a very long time. When the station opened it was billed as one of the oldest buildings around, with material said to be on the order of 175 million years old. The oddity caught on, and the spot earned a write-up in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

It is not a museum and there is no fee. Over the years it has served as a tire shop and a used-car lot, so today you are looking at a working business rather than a polished attraction. But that is part of the charm. You can stop, walk the front sidewalk, and run your eyes over wood that became stone, all in a couple of minutes.

For a quick rundown before you go, check the Colorado Tourism Office’s Lamar page, which points visitors toward the petrified-wood station.