An old report indicated that a Native American soapstone bowl quarry had been documented at this location.   After a steep climb, we found the likely soapstone outcrop, but it took a while to locate the relatively small bowl workshop area. 1 - December 2018

Part of the large soapstone outcrop, which is located on a ridge

Huge boulder outcrop

Another humongous soapstone boulder I expected to find any bowl carvings on the face(s) of these huge boulders, but that was not the case.

Instead, the bowl preforms were found on smaller rocks at the site. Scott shows off preforms on Boulder 1

Two (maybe three) nice soapstone bowl preforms on Boulder 1

Bowl preforms attached to Boulder 2

Possible preform attached to another boulder. Interestingly, all of the "bowls" we saw here were in the early preform stage of manufacture. There were no bowl removal scars evident on any of the boulders. (at least, that we noticed...) It appeared that the manufacturing work here was never carried through to completion.

Rock cave

This boulder appeared to have a shallow depression carved into it.   When I removed the leaves and detritus from the hollowed-out area, pecked "grooves" were visible.

Scott, taking a break on a boulder

Much of the soapstone here was altered, and had a variety of interesting colors, inclusions and textures.

Jumbled boulders

Tangled tree roots growing out of the rock...

2 - November 2021 I revisited this site with Alan C. on a drizzly fall day so that he could photograph it.   We made a couple of new discoveries.

Boulder 1, with 3 bowl preforms

Boulder 1, from a different angle

Boulder 2, with 2 bowl preforms and a bowl removal scar. Alan and I cleaned the leaves/mulch off this rock to find the removal scar, which was not visible on my previous visit with Scott in 2018.

Boulder 2, from another angle

As we looked around for more bowl preforms, Alan spotted this one.

It was on the opposite side of the ridge from the other bowl preforms.

This would have been a heavy bowl; it was over 18" wide on the long side.

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

All Text & Images: Copyright 2018-2021.