Kissimmee, Florida's Tower of Rocks

The last several weeks have been an hiatus from the mineralogical pursuits that increasingly have been taking over my life. Included were an annual religious pilgrimage to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and then driving along a catastrophically threatened Gulf Coast to visit family in Central Florida before returning to Baltimore via I-95 with a visit to Cumberland Island National Seashore off the Coast of Georgia.

The closest to mineralogically pertinent attraction of this sojourn was probably the Florida Caverns State Park, but alas its cave tours were not offered on Tuesdays (or Wednesdays). Eager to score a post for Mineral Bliss, my next stop was what I thought was Kissimmee, Florida's "Tower of Rocks," which in reality is known as the Monument of States. Currently it sits in the middle of a construction zone adjacent to the library between Main Street and Kissimmee's lakefront.

This 50 foot high pyramidal totem pole like structure, the legacy of its designer, the late Dr. C.W. Bressler-Pettis, extends about 50 foot into the air from an approximately 20 foot base. Its beginnings trace to a letter that Dr. Bressler-Pettis sent in 1942 to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as well as the governors of all the 48 states then in existence to request at least one rock from each state. A year later, through various means, the doctor had obtained all the rocks that he needed. They ranged from ore specimens to fossils to meteorites to plaques. They were mortared into concrete slabs to comprise the monument. Mortared into additional concrete slabs were various rocks of marginal mineralogical interest selected from approximately 23,000 "specimens" that Dr. Bressler-Pettis and his wife had collected while enjoying a putative 350,000 miles worth of motor vacations. Pursuant to a theme of American unity for World War II, Dr. Bressler-Pettis, who had scrapped his medical career to work as an artist, sculpted a globe with an eagle atop it to cap his monument. The Monument of States was constructed and dedicated in 1943.

Rocks continued to arrive in Kissimmee for years thereafter, even subsequent to Dr. Bressler-Pettis's death in 1954. Courtesy of the citizens of Kissimmee, many were were added to the monument. Included were slabs with rocks from Alaska and Hawaii, in addition to slabs later sent in by businesses and other nations. As a resident of Maryland and keeper of the Maryland Minerals website, I spent quite a bit of time trying to locate at least one Maryland rock. All I could find was a plaque dated 1941 from Mr. and Mrs. Charles M. Day of Baltimore.

The only other attraction in America I'm aware of that compares in any way to Kissimmee's Monument of States is The Fireplace of States in Bemidji, Minnesota. Its construction took place about eight years before the Monument States after a "resorter" had sent letters to the President of the United States and the governors of each state. I suspect that Dr. Bressler-Pettis inspiration resulted from having passed through Bemidji at some point during those 350,000 miles of driving.