History Enthusiasts Head Back to Track Rocks
For the first time in three years, history and archaeology enthusiasts will have a chance to tour Track Rocks, on Saturday, July 19.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources Anthropologist John Boilegh will lead the tour, with everyone meeting at 9:30 a.m. at the Belmont County Victorian Mansion Museum, 532 N. Chestnut Street in Barnesville. The group will depart for the carvings promptly at 10 a.m. Reservations are not required.
Museum board member, Brock Rogers, said people have frequently asked, “When are we going back to Track Rocks?” So board members brought the tour back.
On location, Boilegh will show and interpret the prehistoric Native American stone carvings.
Officially, it’s called “Barnesville Petroglyph,” but everyone around the area knows it as Track Rocks. It is made up of several sandstone boulders about five miles outside of Barnesville that have more than 100 Native American rock carvings, many of which are of animal tracks or human footprints.
As a prominent archaeological site, the Barnesville Petroglyph was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It is one of four National Register-listed archaeological sites in Belmont County.
Tour attendees will have an opportunity to see the carvings and hear the history behind them and the people who made them. After the tour, visitors will make their way back to the museum for a question-and-answer session.
Track Rocks is located on private property and isn’t typically open to the public in order to protect and preserve the carvings.
“If anyone is a fan of history, it’s a chance to see carvings made by people hundreds of years ago at the place where they originally carved them,” Rogers said. “It’s cool to see these things in museums, but to be able to walk right up to them where they were made is really a special feeling.”
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