Indian Rock sign in question

NORWAY — Selectmen have agreed that Indian Rock should stay at the Lake Pennesseewassee picnic area beside Route 117, even though its authenticity as an ancient corn-grinding site is in doubt.

Town Manager David Holt said Friday that he looked at documents from the state, including pictures of the rock archaeologists reviewed, and the Indian Rock at Lake Pennesseewassee is the same one that was moved from beside the Harrison Road to the picnic area.

State archaeologists investigated it several times over the past 20 years and said there is no evidence that the site was occupied by Indians in the early 1600s. They say the rock's depression is simply a natural formation.

 The rock was moved to accommodate a state highway reconstruction project.

The question now is what to put on a sign to explain to viewers what it is.

"I tried to be a little funny with it," Holt said at Thursday's selectmen's meeting. "Maybe the part about Bigfoot was a little too much," he said, referring to the large, hairy creature some believe roams wilderness areas and others say doesn't exist.

The rock has a deep depression that legend says was used by Indians to grind corn.

Town officials initially thought they had moved the wrong rock during a monthlong effort to save it, after Harrison Road resident Jerry Ellingwood, who initiated the suggestion to save the rock, told the board it wasn't the same rock he knew as Indian Rock. That left the board in a quandary as to what to do with the two slabs of granite with the large bowl indention.

"I think we should try to be truthful about what we know about it," said Selectman Russell Newcomb, who has heard from a few people that the town should keep the rock in place. "I would encourage us to leave it there and put up a sign."

Selectman Bruce Cook suggested a sign reading, "Legend has it Native Americans used this rock to grind corn."

Ellingwood recently thanked Holt and the Board of Selectmen for their efforts to recover Indian Rock, and said that the discussion over whether it was the right hole or not only furthered the interest in it.

"I had three people from out of town say to me they were not interested in the Indian Rock until they noticed it repeatedly in the newspaper," said Ellingwood in a recent letter to Holt. "Now they are each planning to visit it and that is exactly accomplishing my whole goal of recovering it . . . to bring outside folks to Norway in the hopes they will discover the beauty of the lake and stop and purchase something before they leave."

ldixon@sunjournal.com