An acquaintance who has lived most of his life in the area told me about this spot. I was unclear as to both the exact location and what I was looking for (he had told me "Indian carvings"), but after a moderate bushwhack, I managed to find it. It's a classic example of a Native American Soapstone Bowl Quarry. I'd heard there were petroglyphs nearby, but I haven't found any. 1 - First Visit, Mid December 2018 Boulder 1:

Quarry Boulder 1 Approx. 12 ft wide by 7 ft high.   I counted 18 bowl preforms and/or removal scars on this single rock.

Profile detail of Boulder 1 from left side

Profile detail of Boulder 1 from right side

A pair of unfinished bowl preforms - Boulder 1

Bowl removal scar - Boulder 1

Bowl preform - Boulder 1

Bowl removal scar - Boulder 1

Bowl preform - Boulder 1

Boulder 2:

Boulder 2 - full view (After removing lots of leaves/pine needles, as well as a tree!)

Nice example of a bowl removal scar on Boulder 2

Same bowl scar, also showing some of the incised lines on this boulder.

Bowl preform on Boulder 2 This was almost at the point where it would have been detached from the parent rock.   At first, I thought it was just a rock sitting on the boulder.

Bowl preform on Boulder 2, in very early stage of manufacture. It appears that a worker had just begun to chip around the circumference of a future bowl.

2 - Ten days later, I made a return visit to see if I could find anything else here:

I noticed some dished-out depressions in Boulder 2, and cleaned out the leaves and mulch. Sure enough, each depression had the scar from an extracted bowl preform.

I also found an almost rectangular preform, next to the one I'd previously found that was almost ready for detachment from the parent rock.

Addendum - Early August, 2022 After Sheldon & I presented our History In The Woods program to the TCHS in August, a local couple invited me to come out to their place and see some "unfinished carved Indian rocks".   I wasn't sure what to expect when I visited, but found that they had some nice partially finished soapstone bowl examples.   As it turns out, they originally came from this very soapstone quarry, some photos of which we had included in our program.   This quarry is on private land, and these bowl preforms had been moved down from the quarry site to the owners' yard by horse & sled about 50 years ago.   Years later, when the property owners eventually moved away, they didn't want the rocks anymore, and my hosts obtained them.

Detached, partially hollowed-out bowl preform. With chunk of parent rock still attached.  It seems odd that the carver would have gotten this far carving out the bowl's interior without removing that excess piece of rock.

Detached pair of preforms, still joined together. One has a partially hollowed out bowl interior. It is so heavy that I couldn't even budge it!

Click here for a display of the soapstone bowl production process.

All Text & Images: Copyright 2018-2022.