Robert Stoufer, Columbine Mineral Shop’s geologist and on-site manager, was good friends with the shop’s founder, Benjy Kuehling, who died in 2020. The shop, still owned by Kuehling's daughter, Lauri Kuehling Zembower, celebrated its 60th birthday this year. Photo by James Hanlon | Ouray County Plaindealer
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Ouray shop rocks on, 60 years later
Columbine Mineral Shop looks much like it did when it opened in 1966, offering one-of-a-kind souvenirs
“Rocks” says a simple sign extending over the sidewalk on Ouray’s Main Street, adorned with a columbine flower. Inside, long narrow displays invite customers to explore toward the back, receding into Earth’s primordial history as they go. It’s like a natural history museum with all manner of shiny, colorful and jagged crystalline minerals, as well as dinosaur and shark teeth, leaf fossils, petrified wood, fossilized shells and trilobites.