Track Rock Gap
N 34° 52.982 W 083° 52.640
17S E 237026 N 3863850
Union County, Georgia.Cherokee lore about the petroglyphs on a Georgia Historic Marker. Contains many trails. Site is heavily impacted--thus the covering grates.
Waymark Code: WM37N
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 10/30/2005
Views: 200
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.
gotta go back for more pics (w/ gps in them)
Visit Instructions:1. You may log as many different waymarks as you wish but you may only log each one once.
2. You must include a close up photo of the pictograph and your GPSr. The pictograph must be recognizable.
3. Tell a little bit about what you learned of the area.