Idaho Travel Council | Page 18

Payette River North Fork
© The Travel Council

granite mountain
n a t u r e

Family owned and operated

Granite Mountain Nature Gallery, a
rock shop and nature-related business,
was founded in 1987 as Paleo Impressions because it dealt mainly in fossils,
“I was always fascinated by fossils and
minerals of all kinds and started collecting when I was about 10 years old,
which is probably why I later became
a geologist,” explained owner Dennis
DeLaet. “We mainly did the retail and
wholesale trade-show circuit, which
we still do, but we decided to open a
gallery in 1998 in which we have many
one-of-a-kind pieces, and one of the
things we try to do is offer fair prices
for our products.”
According to DeLaet, many of the
products are decorator pieces that
come from about 50 different countries and range in price from 50¢ to
$5,000. The products include minerals, fossils, framed insects, jewelry,
animal carvings of various rock types,
rock and wood vases of many styles
and sizes, rock bowls and canisters,
stone obelisks, spheres from hundreds
of rock types and much, much more.
“We’ve often been called a candy store
for nature lovers,” DeLaet added.

g a l l e r y

buying trips, they can purchase up to 15,000 pounds of merchandise at a time that must
be shipped on a semi-truck because of the sheer volume of material. “We shop the world
and buy in large quantities so we are able to pass the savings on to our customers. ۙB