Mineral & Gem Museum

From an outsider’s perspective, a new museum that houses the five largest lunar meteorites might be as difficult to find as a space rock in a field.

The Maine Mineral & Gem Museum is a bit off the beaten path.

The 15,000-square-foot museum in the town of Bethel in western Maine is displaying more than 100 gemstones, 2,000 minerals and 250 meteorites.

Most of the meteorites on display are from asteroids, but some are known to have fallen from the moon. They were sent hurtling into space after asteroids hit the moon, creating the craters that dot its landscape. One of them weighs more than 120 pounds. The collection also includes meteorites from Mars.

Meteorite expert Darryl Pitt, a consultant on the project, says the scientific community is surprised that such a collection is in Maine.

“When I tell my colleagues in Europe and Asia that there’s a collection of this pedigree in Maine, the first question they ask is, ‘Where’s Maine?’ ” Pitt says. How did it end up here?

The museum’s founders, Larry Stifler and Mary McFadden, began coming to western Maine in the 1970s. The Massachusetts couple became interested in the local mining history and purchased a tract that included the Bumpus Mine, which had produced feldspar and the gemstone beryl. “This area is really the central area for Maine mining and gemstones, so this is why we decided to put the museum here,” Stifler says. Despite its rural location, the museum is world class,

Pitt says: “It’s the real deal.”