FALL RIVER — Measuring 58 feet around and estimated at 140 tons, the Rolling Rock at County Street and Eastern Avenue in Fall River is hard to miss when driving by.
There used to be that too literally It juts out onto the road, so it’s hard to miss when driving by. In the early days of automobiles in Fall River, Rolling Rock was considered a traffic hazard, a “menace,” a “natural anomaly,” and a “petrified lump of mud.” Neighbors wanted to dispose of it by dragging it somewhere else or blowing it up with dynamite.
Although it’s now an iconic and useful landmark for the city, Rolling Rock wasn’t always viewed so favorably from the beginning. How did it get here and why is it preserved? Let’s take a look.
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Rolling Rock: Did it come from the Biblical Flood, Atlantis, or Dighton?
The gigantic Prince Stone (a complex, to put it flamboyantly) sits on a flat granite pedestal, looking like it could be knocked off with a single blow. It was already marked on maps in 1800. But Edward Hitchcock of Amherst College first conducted this study in 1830 when he passed through the town on a geological expedition across the state.
Naturally, the first thing he did was try to force it. Everyone will try it.
And in the early days, it certainly moved – just a little bit.
“It is on the very brink of a quarry,” he wrote at the time, “so that I fear it will disappear without further ado from its present interesting position.”
Hitchcock’s first thought was that it must have washed up here during the Biblical Flood. He later came to adopt a modern interpretation. It was probably carried south by glaciers thousands of years ago and deposited on a stone perch, where it remained hanging.
Rolling Rock likely originated in Dighton because its composition is similar to conglomerates found there. However, one paper once suggested that its original habitat was “probably the mountains of Atlantis.” That’s not the only legend surrounding it. For many years, Indian warriors stuck the limbs of their enemies under rocks and rolled them over them as torture; doctors, fearing Indian robbery, hid treasure in rocks; and Indian chiefs. Many stories have been told, including one about being angry at a brave person. A man from warring tribes woos her daughter and crushes them both under his “giant mass” – of course, none of these stories are told by actual Native Americans.
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Preservation efforts are underway, but nothing is moving
The Fall River developed around Rolling Rock, which was geologically unique and considered dangerous. In the 1860s, Barney Harrison, a foreman at a nearby granite quarry, was worried that some Yahoos he was working with would push the stones over, and that the people inside would be flattened or dislodged from their perches by an explosion. I was worried that there might be. So he reinforced it.
In true “if you don’t know how to do it, do it yourself” fashion, Harrison “repaired” the Rolling Rock by stuffing random junk under it, including “pieces of broken wedges, all iron.” . According to “stone chips” daily evening newsuntil “the wonders of the ages will happen no more.”
By the turn of the 20th century, the County Street area had become heavily populated. Rowhouses were popping up everywhere, roads were being built, and streetcars ran along County Street. Rolling Rock was the centerpiece of the area. It was hard to ignore as some of the rocks hung over County Street itself. Cars were passing and a huge rock jutting into the road created a blind spot.
Efforts to preserve the rock were underway in Fall River as early as 1900, according to . fall river evening newsPeople are petitioning to preserve it “not only as an interesting landmark, but also as a geological specimen directly related to human life itself.”
But like the rock itself, preservation plans have been difficult to move forward with. Nothing happened until 1912, when public outcry over transportation issues grew even stronger. Fall River school students wrote essays and short stories about the rock in favor of preserving it. Generally, however, people preferred to remove the rock “with gunpowder or dynamite,” perhaps moving it to nearby Lafayette Park or elsewhere. Please stay out of the way.
In May 1912, Fall River Evening Herald, about half a dozen citizens who attended the sparsely attended meeting “supported moving the Prince Stone in chunks or in chunks scattered in any direction they wanted after the spark touched the giant gunpowder.” ”. Confronting them was J. Edmund Estes, who handed out copies of an original poem he wrote about rolling rock, calling it “our only great natural curiosity.”
“Let’s understand the true value of this great landmark. Let’s make it a topic of discussion when discussing Fall River’s natural history and an objective point when guiding visitors about the city,” he said. Ta.
However, even though public opinion was shaken here, it remained unchanged.
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How Rolling Rock was saved
If the rock belonged to anyone, it was Estes, president and treasurer of Estes Mill, a twine, rope, and thread manufacturer. He became its biggest supporter over the years. By 1927, he owned the land the rock was on and continued to offer it to the city as a park, but without success. He even designed a plan to surround the rock with triangular greenery to keep drivers safe on County Street. This is exactly the layout for today.
Still, City Hall seemed to prefer blowing Rolling Rock to pieces. The public welcomed this with a shrug. herald news At the time, it was criticized that “the desire for a sporting life has become so strong that the beauty of nature and the charm of phenomena no longer appeal to us.”
The newspaper took a firm editorial stance against the destruction and movement of rocks. In 1930, the paper took Estes’ offer to heavily publicize a fund to build a park around the rock, and for months it relentlessly promoted the idea, publishing updates on the fund and positive letters to the editor. Posted. The money soon trickled in.
By June 1930, the paper had raised about $5,700 for the fund. Today that’s about $104,000. It was finally enough to get the ball rolling, so to speak.
Later that year, on November 22, 1930, a crowd of 2,000 gathered on County Street as Mayor Edmund P. Talbot dedicated the new park, marking a major shift in public opinion. As the old saying goes, you never know what you’ve got until it’s about to blow you to pieces.
No one was happier than Estes, who had seen decades of hard work come to fruition.
“Years of intermittent controversy are over, fundamental hostility is overturned and replaced with universal goodwill, traffic threats are removed, eyesores are transformed into places of beauty, and Fall River’s famous Rolling Rock… was saved.” “I’m so grateful,” he said.
Dan Medeiros can be contacted at: dmereiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to the Herald News today.