Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Rock Lake Revisited

By Mike Ault, Copyright 2007
“About 2 years ago I read about the pyramids of Rock Lake. In Native American legends there were the “stone teepees” visible from the shore or canoe when the water level in Rock Lake was low, early settlers also reported these structures. Then in the early 1800’s the level of the lake was raised by 10-20 feet to allow for a mill to be constructed, inundating these structures and driving them from men’s minds until the 1900’s when again the levels in the lake were low enough and the water clear enough (in the early spring and late fall) for the tops of the structures to be visible. In the late 1960’s these structures where documented in the 1967 issue of "Skin Diver" magazine in an article by John Kennedy. Several popular books such as “THE LOST PYRAMIDS OF ROCK LAKE” and “ATLANTIS IN WISCONSIN” by Frank Joseph and “THE DRAGON IN THE LAKE” by Archie Eschborn, brought the structures to the attention of the world generating interest from several television shows that specialize in ancient mysteries…Randy had chosen Fremont Bar as our first dive site. It is likely that Freemont Bar is probably at least one of the sites that led to the stone teepee legends. The bar is in about 20-30 foot of water and consists of a sand bar with a pile of rocks on each end that are roughly the same size and shape. The placement of the stone piles on Fremont bar reminded me of the placement of the earthen mounds at Aztalan…The Fremont bar seemed to me to definitely show the hand of man in the placement of the stone piles and their uniformity. Some experts have claimed that they are only glacial drumlins but why would a glacier leave two nearly identical piles of stone on either end of a sand base? Also during the dive at Fremont bar I found what I believe was a mortar stone. The mortar stones used by Native Americans were usually 2-3 feet in diameter and have a depression chipped into the top side that when used with a pestle stone worked as a primitive grinder for grain or for shells to add as binder in pottery clay. The stone I found was about 2 feet in diameter, about a foot and a half thick and had a depression on the top that fit the typical mortar stone description exactly. In most cases mortar stones where left behind when a site was abandoned as they were too heavy to be transported…On the next dive we examined the so-called “Delta Mound” site. It was a uniform 10 feet depth and had very well defined sides…

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The top of the mound had numerous stone circles, some with stones weighing at least 100 pounds or more. All of the stone circles we found had the same accumulation of silt and moss as the underlying stones of the mound which seemed to indicate they had been underwater the same length of time…After diving the alter we pulled up the anchors and sought out the location of the effigies reported to be of a turtle and a headless man…We found odd shaped cutouts that ran about 4-5 feet in diameter and to about 3 – 4 foot in depth. I followed the edges and they seemed to be a partial shape of some kind but whether it was a turtle, headless man or just some weird natural formation I am not sure, if I was a betting man I would have to place money on it being the partially silted in turtle effigy, I have never seen a natural phenomena that could produce that type of pattern to that depth…”
http://www.scubamage.com/files/rock_lake_rpt.pdf

2 comments :

Anonymous said...

On Missouri Hill, near Lake Mills WI, what is the significance of a rock with a white, very simple serpent on a rock? It's white, with a simple oval head and long tail. Saw it there several years ago.

Unknown said...

I've been on the search for Missouri hill by Rock Lake WI. Is Missouri hill at state park around rock Lake? If you have any information about Missouri hill and where I can find it please let me know. Thanks