SOUTH DEERFIELD — For 23 years, The Rock Fossil and Dinosaur Shop on Greenfield Road has invited children to explore a period of South Deerfield’s past when dinosaurs and neanderthals roamed the region. Now, owner Gina Bordoni-Cowley of Granby is stepping back and looking for someone to carry its mission forward.
The shop was put on the market last month. According to LoopNet.com, Cuoco & Co. Real Estate is listing the 2,112-square-foot shop for $599,000. The listing also mentions the residential 1,590-square-foot, three-bedroom ranch next door, which is also for sale.
“I would love somebody to take the business on and keep the torch burning,” Bordoni-Cowley said behind the counter of the shop crowded with crystals, stuffed dinosaurs, a fake fortune teller booth, faux dinosaur skulls and closets full of other fossil-related products.
Bordoni-Cowley said she is unsure if she wants to sell the business or just the property, but she has reached out to paleontologists, geologists and educators hoping The Rock Fossil and Dinosaur Shop will catch their eye.
“I’m still considering different options,” she explained.
Bordoni-Cowley bought the shop from its original owner, George Marchacos, in July of 2015 after teaching first grade at the Campus School of Smith College for about 20 years.
“I took things over and brought my educational background to make it more interactive, more hands-on,” she said.
In her Smith classroom, Bordoni-Cowley taught science with an interactive approach.
“There was a lot of focus on science and touching and interacting and questioning and having curiosity around the natural world, so I took that and kept creating,” she said.
Before visitors reach the South Deerfield shop’s door, they pass an artificial, erupting volcano and elevated river where kids can pan for gemstones. Inside, shelves of fossil products cover almost every inch of the walls and a door opens to a mine shaft that Bordoni-Cowley recreated inside a tractor trailer container. Children can follow the lights on their hard hats to spot gemstones, fossils, seashells and other treasures for themselves.
“There’s nothing like this around,” Bordoni-Cowley said. “There’s nothing where kids can interact in a hands-on, fun way and also learn.”
Outside, kids become excavators in the sand pits, brushing up their own discoveries as models of dinosaurs from the region’s history watch between the trees of the outdoor walkway. One local dinosaur, the dilophosaurus, peeks its head from a fake tarpit, a possible nod to the creature spitting tar-like venom in “Jurassic Park.”
“It left its footprints all over New England,” Bordoni-Cowley said of the “super fast, super fierce” coelophysis raptor to the left of the dilophosaurus.
“The history here is so rich,” she continued. According to the owner, South Deerfield rested on ideal land for preserving the footprints of its prehistoric residents.
When the retired teacher leads activities for birthday parties and summer camp groups, she also teaches kids about local geologist Edward Hitchcock’s fossil discoveries and his wife Orra White Hitchcock’s illustrations of the fossils. The children also learn about Greenfield resident Dexter Marsh, who stumbled upon dinosaur tracks while laying down the slabs of his walkway in 1835, according to Amherst College archives. By the time Marsh died in 1853, he had collected between 400 and 500 stone slabs with a total of about 1,000 tracks.
“Dinosaurs have captivated the attention of children forever, and will continue to,” Bordoni-Cowley said. “It just sparks their curiosity. [Dinosaurs] were here and some of them were ginormous and some of them were the size of chickens, so it’s really compelling to learn about them and also safe, because they’re not alive anymore.”
Displays of an alien spaceship and a neanderthal child in a cave Bordoni-Cowley constructed herself, the shop’s latest addition, also greet visitors beside the dinosaurs, creating an otherworldly habitat of unlikely neighbors behind the shop.
One creature even waddles through the store. Carmen, a 14-year-old chihuahua, wanders the shop, sporting long, fluffy chestnut fur not unlike the fur the faux neanderthals wear while guarding the checkout counter.
“She’s our woolly mammoth,” joked Bordoni-Cowley’s sister, Vicky Bordoni.
When new owners move into the shop, Bordoni-Cowley said she will miss teaching children about natural history most and hearing them holler, “This is the best day of my life,” as they step into the store.
“That’s what this shop really embodies,” Bordoni-Cowley said. “I’ll miss those interactions, those sweet small moments that have been absolutely delightful.”