Dr. Pettis, besides being a local physician, was also the president of the Kissimmee All-States Tourist Club or KAST. He knew a thing or two about attracting a crowd, and apparently the attention of then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Dr. Pettis wrote to FDR with a simple request - send rocks. By the following year he had collected signed rocks from all 48 states sent by their governors and the President himself.

With a solid foundation of donations, he began embedding the rocks, with help from the Kissimmee Lion's Club, into a 50-foot tower, which became known as "The Monument of States." Dr. Pettis topped his tower off with a 562-pound concrete eagle he had sculpted. Also thrown into the cement mix were rocks from he and his wife's 350,000 miles of road trips. On March 28, 1943, the monument was complete and dedicated amid mild patriotic fanfare.

The mortar around the rocks tells the story of their origin. The names have the appearance of a child's stick markings on a freshly poured sidewalk. Each slate is painted in a color as to stand apart from all the other chips off the block.

The weight of the monument has been estimated at 600,000-pounds. 1,500 stones are spread throughout the monument's 21 tiers. Since its original erecting, Hawaii, Alaska and several foreign countries have managed to carve out a space for themselves. A pebble from the Sahara Desert seems in strange contrast to a large slab from Louisiana beside it.

Rocks are not the monument's only ornaments. Also impaled in its slabs (in case you visit and feel like having a scavenger hunt) are a pair of Montana buffalo horns, a map of Holland, petrified wood from Arizona, glacier eggs, meteors, a petrified apple from Wisconsin, a cannonball from Michigan and a human skull.

In 2001 Hampton Hotel's Save-a-Landmark program cleaned up the monument; adding lighting, improving landscaping and placing an American flag above Dr. Pettis' eagle. It was their tenth restoration project since they started a PR cleaning spree in 2000. Other restored roadside has included the World’s Largest Santa, a towering Uncle Sam in Toledo, Long Island's Big Duck, and a See Rock City barn in TN.

Monument of States
Lakefront Park at Johnston Street and Ruby Avenue
Kissimmee, FL
In the neighborhood - Shell World