A rock sculpture in a pond at the Petersen Rock Garden.

Susan Caward spent most of her life living on her family’s property near Redmond where her grandfather, a Danish immigrant named Rasmus Petersen, turned a love of rocks and his own labor into a roadside attraction known around the world.

The Petersen Rock Garden is known for the numerous rock structures Petersen built with his own two hands in the 1930s and ‘40s. They have a weathered look to them and the landscaping today is rough around the edges, but the displays still inspire visitors. There are small rock structures, stone paths, a bridge decorated with rocks, a grotto, ponds and a small replica of the Statue of Liberty.

And peacocks that roam the property unrestricted.

But time has caught up with the 57-year-old Caward, who suffered a serious back injury in her 20s and now struggles to care for her grandfather’s creations. Caward gets around with a walking stick and has trouble walking or standing for long periods of time. Sometimes, her legs go numb. It’s all a sign, she said, that it is time for her to retire.

So Caward is working with her real estate agent to sell the property, which is listed for $825,000. In addition to all the art and rocks, the price also includes the peacocks.

Stewardship key for owner

She doesn’t want to sell the property to just anybody. Her hope is to find a suitable buyer who will maintain her grandfather’s creations.

“I just want to kind of retire, come here every once in a while and see what the new people are doing with it,” Caward said.

Caward said she wants to be clear that she is not retiring because she is no longer interested in the rock garden. The rock garden and the surrounding property is her home and very important to her, she said, but because of her declining health, she simply is unable to continue doing what it takes to maintain the rock garden.

“It’s not that I don’t want to do it. It’s just that my body can’t do it,” Caward said. “My doctor has been cautioning me, ‘You’ve got to retire.’”

Caward sat at a picnic table amid enchanting stone structures, as peacocks shrieked, cats pranced and her dog “Hellboy” sniffed around, and told the story of how she broke her back.

Caward broke her back in three places after a ram living on the family farm attacked her. If it were not for her dog “Sheba” — an English herder and blue heeler mix — Caward is convinced she would be dead.

It all started when she was feeding the animals on the farm and turned her back on one of the rams.

“Next thing I know, I went flying through the air, landed on the rock wall, rolled down off the rock wall, and started crawling away and had a feeling I should look behind me,” Caward recalled. “And I look around behind me and the sheep is on top of the wall coming down on top of me head first, and I just thought, ‘I am dead, dead, dead, dead.’”

At this point, Caward curled up in a ball on the ground with the expectation that she would be killed by the animal, but then Sheba vaulted off her back and took the ram down and hung onto its nose until Caward could escape.

As a young woman working on a farm every day, she quickly forgot the back injury and went on with her life.

It wasn’t until a decade later that her doctor discovered she had actually broken her back, and gave her a choice between back surgery and eventually winding up in a wheelchair, she said. Caward chose surgery, which kept her back injury at bay for a good 19 years, she said.

A love for the visitors

She said she loves the people who come to visit the rock garden. She loves talking to people, but she envisions living on a piece of land with some friends where she could perhaps raise animals, sleep in, and enjoy her later years.

“Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think,” Caward said, invoking the inscription on the Statue of Liberty rock structure her grandfather made.

Kaisha Brannon, the real estate agent helping Caward sell the property, has a personal connection with the rock garden and wants to see it go to the right buyers.

Brannon said her grandparents and parents visited the rock garden, and growing up, it was a special place she would go see as a kid. Now, her own children are exploring the garden while she shows the place to prospective buyers.

“I was super excited when I got the phone call, because I do know the Petersen Rock Garden really well, and I do know how important it is to the community and to central Oregon, so ultimately this is very dear to my heart,” she said. “It’s not necessarily about the real estate transaction for me. It’s very much about helping Susan and finding the right person that is going to be the new person that takes care of the property.”

While there is no way to know what the future owners will do with the property once they buy it, Brannon said she is doing her best to vet buyers to ensure the rock garden winds up in the right hands.

Brannon added that the rock garden is open to the public during the selling process, and Caward hopes people will still come visit at this time.

‘A community memory’

Kelly Cannon-Miller, the executive director of the Deschutes County Historical Society, said the historical society stands ready to provide research and background to whoever ends up buying the beloved rock garden.

“I hope the person who buys it is ready to take it on and loves it the way people have loved it over the years,” Cannon-Miller said. “It definitely has a community memory attached to it. Folks who grew up going there want to go back and see it and remember family visits.”

Cannon-Miller explained that back in its heyday, the Petersen Rock Garden accommodated thousands of tourists in a given year driving up and down U.S. Highway 97, which back then was mainly referred to as The Dalles-California Highway.

At the time, during the 1940s and ‘50s, visitors could visit the rock garden’s museum, which still stands today, and could take a swan boat ride on the pond or grab a bite in the diner in addition to exploring the rock garden. Having lunch and contemplating life outside on the lawn surrounded by peacocks and Petersen’s art was a popular pastime for visitors, Cannon-Miller said.

“Between 1935 and 1952, Rasmus was always still building and changing it, so it had that changing attraction element to it as well,” Cannon-Miller said of the rock garden.

Petersen’s art was influenced by both his childhood growing up in Denmark, combined with his experience homesteading and farming in Oregon, a combination complimented by his irreverent sense of humor and his contemplation of nature, Cannon-Miller added.

Petersen died of a heart attack inside the museum on the property in 1952 at the age of 69 and is buried in Redmond Memorial Cemetery.