TORRINGTON – The Rock Shop. The business and its hand-painted wooden signs advertising crystals, jewelry and more are staples in Goshen County. Although it may feel like The Rock Shop has been in operation forever at the corner of Road 47 and U.S. Highway 26/85, in reality it first opened its doors 54 years ago.
“We bought the property in fall of ’62, and opened about the beginning of June ’63,” owner Dale Miller said.
The road to open the shop wasn’t an easy one – Dale and his wife, Wanda, recall tearing down other structures and recycling the material to construct the building.
“Wanda’s sister, Lola, and her husband, Ted Schiller, were in business with us when we first started,” Dale said. The Schillers have since passed on. “We all came from South Dakota.”
Dale and Ted spent months building the shop, while also working at the Holly Sugar factory. By late spring of 1963, they were ready to call it complete.
“Ted went and dug up jade for fun, he thought we could sell that (along with other rocks),” Dale said of what prompted the couples to open The Rock Shop. “We hunted rock for several years – we dug jade in several different places.”
One such place was a mine on government land east of Riverton. Eventually, government regulations became too restricting for the hunters, and they decided to stop digging jade after approximately 15 years.
