Track Rock Gap (Union County) - Georgia Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

11/25/2012 -- This marker has been removed and replaced by four other markers.

One of the best-known of the petroglyph, or marked stone, sites in Georgia. The six table-sized soapstone boulders contsin hundereds of symbols carved or pecked into their surface. Archaeologists have speculated dates for the figures from the Archaic Period (8,000 to 1,000 B.C.) to the Cherokee Indians who lived here until the 19th Century. No one knows the exact meaning of the symbols os glyphs which represent animals, birds, tracks and geometric figures. The earliest written account (1834) was by Dr. Matthew Stephenson, who was director of the U.S. Branch Mint in Dahlonega. One of the favorite stories about Track Rock Gap was recorden by ethnographer James Mooney who gathered Cherokee Stories. The Cherokee called this sith Datsu nalasgun yiu (where there are tracks) and Degayelun ha (the printed or branded place). Cherokee stories include an explanation that hunters paused in the gap and amused themselves by carving the glyphs: the marks were made in a great hunt when the animals were driven through the gap, and that the tracks were made when the animals were leaving the great canoe after a flood almost destroied the world and while the earth and rocks were soft.

Type of Marker: Park Marker #: GHM 144-1 Date: 1988 Sponsor: Georgia Historical Commission

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Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   09/06/2009 Lat34North visited it 08/22/2009 Sprinterman visited it 06/17/2008 debbado visited it 07/30/2006 Markerman62 visited it 11/19/2005 Allen_L visited it 10/30/2005 ChapterhouseInc visited it

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