Crews works to extract the 125-ton boulder from the old Nielsen residential addition that today is part of Todd Park’s north section in northeast Austin. Once out of the ground and moved about 100 yards, the boulder was dragged nearly one mile across a frozen terrain to its resting place near the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center’s original interpretive center. (Photos courtesy of the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center)

LOOKBACK: Austin’s famous boulder made move 40 years ago

In 1985, glacial rock finally placed at Jay C. Hormel Nature Center after five days of work to drag it from Todd Park

By Tim Ruzek, CRWD outreach coordinator

At an estimated 3.6 billion years old, a boulder mostly buried near Wolf Creek in the north section of Austin’s Todd Park needed a big push 40 years ago.

“The rock that may make Austin famous is not a form of music. The rock … make that … boulder will become the next attraction at the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center,” the Austin Daily Herald wrote Oct. 20, 1985.

“Getting it there is the problem.”

This boulder — a popular feature of the nature center — weighed 112 tons (about 224,000 pounds) and measured 12 feet tall and 20 feet at its widest point.

(Left) Austin’s Parks & Recreation director in the 1980s, the late Bob Auer, stands on the boulder before its fully excavated out of the ground in today’s north section of Todd Park; (right) a little girl enjoys one of the favorite pastimes for children at the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center: Climbing to the top of the rock.

Plans originally aimed to move the boulder in August 1985 by using a house-moving firm but various issues, including a lack of funding for the move, delayed it.

Fundraising efforts included selling chunks of the rock that contained pink, smoky quartz and flecks of mica.

(Left) A closeup photo of the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center’s gneiss rock and (right) the rock featured on nature center apparel.

“It’s a unique link to our past and to our future,” said Vince Shay, the nature center’s director at the time who raise money for moving what was “not just your ordinary rock.”

At the time, the Friends of the Hormel Nature Center didn’t exist to help fund such a project. The nonprofit started in 1988 and has grown significantly over the years.

Jay C. Hormel Nature Center director Luke Reese (on right) works with students in 2016 to move the 125-ton gneiss boulder. (Photo courtesy of the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center)

It is believed the rock was moved from the Minnesota River Valley by a mass of slow-moving glaciers, coming to rest in an area that became the Nielsen Addition’s residential neighborhood.

Nielsen Addition had about 40 families but experienced health hazards and threats to private wells and the city’s well in Todd Park (today’s artesian-fed pond). These issues stemmed from poor subsoil conditions, narrow lots and unusually high water tables.

A 1954 aerial image shows in the upper half the Neilsen Addition that today is part of Todd Park’s north softball complex and parkland.

As of 1978, with Austin Housing & Redevelopment Authority (HRA) leading the way with federal funds, the city hoped to convert the acquired Nielsen Addition property into more parkland or possibly a municipal golf course.

In 1979, the third and final phase of the Nielsen Addition project was completed with the demolition or relocation of 19 remaining homes.

Demolition and removal of homes for the final phase of the Nielsen Addition project as shown in the June 14, 1979, edition of the Austin Daily Herald. This work also was done by the rock’s moving company — Wallace Bustad Crane & Excavation Service, of Austin.

Wallace Bustad Crane & Excavating Service was involved in the Nielsen Addition project, and continued work in the area for the nature center’s rock. Wet weather and blue clay under the boulder, however, caused problems.

Wallace Bustad’s crew works Dec. 18, 1985, to move the boulder across a one-mile, frozen terrain and (on right) across Austin’s 21st Street Northeast to get it onto the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center’s property. (Photos courtesy of the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center)

This rock is what’s known as a “glacial erratic,” a piece of bedrock torn from its original resting place and taken many miles by ice. Geologists believe it was created as part of a “massive piece of banded gneiss born of heat and pressure deep within the earth a couple of billion years ago” and then slowly weathered toward the surface.

Experts believed the rock was deposited locally by glaciers between 250,000 to 500,000 years ago.

While there’s a chance it was from Canadian gneiss, experts thought it likely came from bedrock from Redwood, Renville, Kandiyhohi, Pope and Stearns counties in central Minnesota. Those counties are the only areas of exposed gneiss in the state.

In 2016, the Ruzek sisters, Estelle and Aubrey, check out the nature center’s rock that was found on the farm of Jens & Katie Neilsen (noted on the plaque on the right) that today is part of Todd Park’s north section.

“The rock is going to move again, after so many years,” Shay wrote in September 1985, “and we hope come to rest in front of the interpretive building, where it can become an exciting interpretive tool and display for all of our visitors.”

Austin Daily Herald’s headline about the rock project in its Oct. 20, 1985, edition

Enough donations came in to allow the boulder to be moved in mid-December 1985.

Overall, nearly five days of work was involved with the move, starting with extracting the boulder from the ground and moving it 100 yards.

On Dec. 18, 1985, with the help of heavy tracked equipment and an overlaid road of ice, the Bustad company “pushed, pulled and shoved” the boulder from Todd Park’s north end to the nature center. This one-mile journey took several hours to complete across the frozen terrain.

Austin promotional magazine’s feature in the late 1980s of the nature center’s stepping-stone crossing over Dobbins Creek’s north branch and its “glacial erratic.”

Legendary Herald reporter, the late Lee Bonorden, wrote that the boulder “may be dubbed ‘Wally’s Rock’ in honor of the contractor who tackled the monumental project and succeeded Wednesday.”

Nearly a year later, Shay, Bustad and the Austin Parks & Recreation director, Robert Auer, gathered in November 1986 for a Herald photo with a plaque describing the gneiss rock near the nature center’s original interpretive center.

This plaque was placed on part of the boulder that broke away during its excavation at Todd Park.

A wintry look for the nature center’s glacial erratic. (Photo courtesy of the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center)