The Petrified Man of Bloomer, MN

On a summer day in 1896 in the town of Bloomer, MN a pair of men, D.M. Williams and Richard Omand were digging a culvert near a highway when they found in the dirt something that they never expected to find. In a bed of alkali clay, they found a body. Not a coffin with a body inside or a skeleton halfway through decomposition, but a full body preserved like stone. Viewers could distinguish facial features, the position of all his limbs, and his approximate height, weight, and race. Some believed he was the body of French voyageur from the 17^th century, others thought he was the body of a prehistoric man buried hundreds of years ago. Two men, Antoine and Malve La Count, claimed it was the body of their father whom they buried 58 years before, after he was killed.

 People throughout Marshall County (where the body was found) and the rest of the surrounding area flocked to see the petrified man. Opportunistic businessmen bought and sold the body around the area for awhile in an attempt to capitalize on the unique discovery. At one point the body was held in the Crookston, MN jail to keep it safe in between ownership changes. But as more people viewed the body, they began to notice some features were too well preserved. Some of the lines around the features looked too good almost like they had been formed by hand. People also noticed that the surface of the body was missing the reddish tint that usually accompanied things that were buried in the iron-rich soil of the area. A few weeks later a set of plaster molds were found in Crookston that matched the Petrified Man and the mystery was over.

            It turns out the body was not the petrified remains of a person but was instead a plaster model created by a local plasterer during a slow winter. The true identity of the creator of the petrified man was not revealed, but the true nature of the petrified man was. With the truth revealed, the crowds retreated, and the petrified man was sold and brought away to an area where people may not know the truth.

            At another point in that decade Gerhard Herriges, a part owner of the Madison Milling Co., was looking for a new way to bring in money to help support the business. Herriges and his partner William Kitzinger decided to purchase a petrified man from a man named Pokey Winters. Winters had purchased it from “some men north of here who had ‘dug it up’”. The dates on the “discovery” of the petrified man in Bloomer, MN and the purchase of the petrified man in Lac qui Parle County don’t quite line up correctly, but mistakes with dates have been made before and the likelihood of two unrelated petrified men popping up in western MN at the same time is quite slim.

Herriges and Kitzinger purchased the petrified man for the cost of a horse, a shotgun, and 1,000 lbs. of flour. The two brought the petrified man around the area, displaying him at county fairs. Herriges began to feel skeptical about the authenticity of the petrified man and eventually pulled out of doing the fair displays to distance himself from the hoax. After the fair season was over the petrified man was stored underneath a mill warehouse where it was later found by a pack of children playing by the mill and was broken up.

            For many years that was the fate of the petrified man, to sit broken underneath a mill. But eventually Gerhard Herriges son Ray found the petrified man and decided it would be better served as a piece in the LqP county museum. At that point all that was left was the top of his head which is still displayed in the museum. Ray Herriges also wrote about the petrified man in his book Fire on the Prairiewhich, along with its sequel The Years After, tell many entertaining stories from the early days of the county. We are unfortunately out of copies of Fire on the Prairie but copies of The Years After in the museum gift shop.