Redmond is also home to some of Santa's reindeer, a classic 1950s rock garden and the Redmond Hotshot Crew. Operation Santa Claus 4355 W. U.S. Hwy. The Christmas season and spring calving time are the highlights of the year for Operation Santa Claus. During the holidays, many of the reindeer that live here are on the job driving Santa's sleighs in Christmas parades all over the West, but they always keep some reindeer at home for local visitors to see. Call for a schedule of Christmas events.
Admission is free.
The artist was Rasmus Petersen, a Danish immigrant farmer who settled in Bend in 1906. Petersen collected the stones and built the gardens entirely by himself between 1935 and his death in 1952. He said the pursuit was less arduous than farming his 300 acres. The beauty and variety of the stones are quite amazing, as is Petersen's childlike sense of storytelling and patriotism. Inside the shop building is a museum filled with a vast number of polished rock specimens, petrified wood, thundereggs and fossils.