JOHNSON CREEK - The eccentricities of a Jefferson County turkey farmer were not limited to a rotating bar, pink and purple shag-carpeted walls and an elevated dance floor dubbed "The Roost."

So when Clarence Hartwig added on to the bird-shaped Gobbler Supper Club he opened in 1969, field stone just wouldn't do.

Since the early 1970s, the walls of the restaurant's entry way and lobby have been covered in chunks of petrified wood, some pieces weighing more than 200 pounds but most pieces weighing less than 50 pounds.

Much of it is now on pallets after workers this week used hammer drills to remove and prepare it for Saturday. That's when the ancient pieces of tree will be put up for auction along with the building, its contents and nine acres of land.

Depending on the bidders, the storied eatery and dance spot could be reopened or it could meet the same fate of the Gobbler Hotel up the hill to the east: a bulldozer.

"It is a landmark, and we'd hate to see the landmark go away but we may not have any choice," said Marvin Havill, one of the property's three owners. "We just can't keep holding on to it. We're going to be losing a lot of money selling it, but it's time."

Daryl Spoerl, with whom Havill has been in the car business for more than 30 years in Fort Atkinson, and Ray Krek, a Jefferson attorney, are the other co-owners of the property along Interstate 94 at the eastbound off-ramp to Johnson Creek.

The trio bought the defunct supper club - a 16,444-square-foot, two-level building - and land in 1996 as an investment for $494,000 and spent $630,000 to upgrade the mechanicals and decor, including replacing the shag carpet on the walls with pink and purple paint.

More than 200 of the original leather lounge chairs, most of them purple and costing $114 in the late 1960s, remain along with several purple and pink tables. Whoever buys the building will also get a few dozen gold-colored listening devices that were installed throughout the facility by Hartwig so he could eavesdrop on his employees, Havill said.

"It's certainly unique, and there's a tremendous amount of history here," Spoerl said.

Hartwig spent $1 million to build the supper club, designed by Fort Atkinson architect Helmut Ajango, but the family was forced to sell the property in the mid-1990s. Over the years, the one-time draw to high rollers from throughout southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, has been a Mexican restaurant, a rib joint and, in 1997, a restaurant called The New Gobbler. The Lac Du Flambeau and Menominee Indian tribes have considered the property for casinos and, in 2003, the Johnson Creek Village Board rejected a plan for a strip club called "A Gobbler-A-Go-Go."

Many of those who tried businesses in the Gobbler building lacked the drive and money needed for a startup business, Havill said.

Location was never the problem.

"You've got the park-and-ride, you've got the mall across the street, you've got high visibility, you've got good acreage," Havill said. "It's just a shame. It really is."

The Gobbler is on a short list of the Interstate's most recognizable icons: the ABS Global sign in DeForest and its puns on bulls and insemination; the Aztalan Racing motocross course near Lake Mills; the waterparks in Lake Delton; and Olympia, the manmade ski hill in Oconomowoc. A yellow barn with a smiley face in Delafield has been painted red and the face moved to a barn in Mukwonago, while Miller Park has replaced County Stadium in Milwaukee.

The Gobbler has been on the market for years and at one time, Havill, Spoerl and Krek were asking $2.89 million. The nine-acre property was assessed by the village this year at $1.8 million. An average of 64,000 vehicles pass the property each day, according to auction documents. If the sellers don't get their reserve price, which has not been disclosed, they would likely try again in the spring.

"There's been a tremendous amount of interest in it. It's definitely prime real estate," said auctioneer Ray Miller, who last year auctioned off the property of a controversial Necedah religious leader's six-member church. "I seem to get my hands around these unique situations. This one's going to be interesting."

The petrified wood - gingko, swamp cypress, red gum, cedar, elm and hemlock harvested from New Mexico and Mexico, according to Ajango - will be sold by the piece, by the pound, to maximize the revenue. It's unclear how much the wood could sell for, and it will depend on the type and quality of what is found, said Jefferson native Nevin Franke, owner of Burnie's Rock Shop in Madison. At one time, he considered buying the Gobbler for a rock shop and museum.

Some petrified wood can fetch several hundred dollars a pound, but most sells for about $1 a pound, he said. That could allow many to take home a piece of Wisconsin roadside history.

"That's what a lot of people get for a garden variety of material like that," Franke said. "If it has some character maybe somebody would pay over that. I might have to check that out."