In a ranch-style house in Hillsboro that collectors Richard and Helen Rice built around their passion, the Rice Museum of Rocks and Minerals guards the finest collection of rocks, gems and fossils in the Pacific Northwest — an Smithsonian-affiliated treasure house just west of Portland.
The star is the “Alma Rose,” a blood-red rhodochrosite crystal cluster from Colorado that’s considered one of the finest mineral specimens on Earth. Around it sparkle Oregon sunstones, thunder eggs (the state rock), petrified wood rainbows, meteorites and a gallery of fluorescent minerals that glow like neon under ultraviolet light.
Kids pan for treasures and crack geodes; grown-ups linger over gold nuggets and a baby dinosaur. It’s a small museum with a giant sparkle — pure rock-hound heaven.
