LOUDON COUNTY, Tenn. — Pete Stimpson was on a trip to Tahiti in 1988 when he collected his first seashell.
Thirty-two years later, the Loudon physician owns one of the largest shell collections in the world.
"One thing I do get involved in is world records. For fishermen, there's biggest marlin, biggest bass, and stuff like that. For me, there's a listing of each species and the biggest ones that have been found. It says how big it is and who owns it. I've got about 3,000 world records," Stimpson said.
After several years of planning and two locations, Stimpson is preparing to open this month the Stimpson Seashell Museum in downtown Loudon.
“It's taken some time and a lot of work and a lot of money, but I think it'll help tourism. I think it'd be good for the county," Stimpson said.
The museum on Wharf Street already has thousands of shells displayed in glass cases, but they only make up a small percentage of Stimpson's collection. He says it takes a while to safely transport the shells to their new home.
"You have to package it, transport it, unpackage it and label it all one by one," Stimpson said.
He hopes that eventually, schools will take field trips to the museum so students can learn about conchology and malacology; the study of shells and mollusks, even though Tennessee is a landlocked state hundreds of miles from the ocean.
The Stimpson Seashell Museum is scheduled to open in mid July. Stimpson said the only other seashell museum in the country with as expansive a collection as this one is located in Florida.