COLUMBUS - "Fort Kerr" is "that rock house" in Columbus that everyone from Columbus knows, but few know its roots. And roots are not too far off considering the house is built using pre- served wood known as petrified wood, which is as hard as rock. The rock house
is at the corner of Forrest and North
street in Columbus. The petrified wood home was built by Ralph Kerr in 1947, and he moved into the unfinished house in 1949. The rock was gathered from around the Caldwell area, and master stonemason Ernest Treeter came over from Caldwell to jump-start the build. In those days, petrified wood used to lay around the ground in abundance, and
many houses around Texas were built using this special rock. Petrified wood is a few thousand to millions of years old, with most petrified wood believed to be between 65 and 570 million years old.
As time marches on, not in millennia, but decades, that rock house foundation
is sinking due to gravity and the weight of the stone. The foundation, poured to support a six-story building, is tearing away and will one day return to being a pile of rocks.
