Judaculla Rock

During a recent telephone conversation with my parents, Dad, knowing I'd been in western North Carolina during early October, asked me if I'd ever seen Judaculla Rock. I had never heard of it, but soon after did a Google search and sent Mom and Dad some of the information I'd found. Dad responded (with Mom's typing assistance) thus:

Thanks for the response on Judaculla Rock. When I was 9 years old we stayed in a motel in Sylva along with Grandma, Uncle Bub, Aunt Olga and her husband, Albert. We heard about Judaculla rock and found it after a long search through the countryside. We had to walk through a cornfield -- I think that is what it was. It was totally unexploited and in a remote spot under a tree. Someone had painted the carvings in the stone with white paint so they could be seen more readily. I never heard of the rock again and always wondered about it; guess it made an impression in my young mind.

After that conversation I devised a plan to find Judaculla Rock and connect with my father's long-held memory of it, a plan which, as usual, involved Tal! We rose early this morning and struck out for Jackson County in North Carolina, armed with internet directions and a North Carolina map. Three hours later we'd found it, pictured here.


The directions I had were clear and complete, but I reveled in knowing my ancestors had been that way before Tal and me and understood what a search it must have been (probably approaching 70 years ago). My father's memory of a corn field, I think, was correct. The road crosses Caney's Creek into a pretty valley, which is now a cow pasture. Then it curves to the right and the rock is located where the road ends and a private driveway begins.

According to the material from the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the boulder is steatite (soapstone) and, as you can see from the photograph, is covered with hundreds of cupules and deep grooves. More difficult to see in this view are a number of designs which resemble humans, footprints and geometric shapes.

How old is it? Estimates range from 3000 to 5000 years. Wow. I wonder how many people have used, touched, looked at, marveled over that rock over the course of all those years.