Indiana Would Be Jealous

by Jake Farley

The woods tell many stories if you know how to look.

On the first day of fall the sun rises due east. Every morning after that, from fall to winter, it rises further and further south on the horizon until, on the first day of winter, it is as far south as it will ever be. Then it swings back, rising northward morning by morning until the first day of summer when it is as far north on the horizon as it will ever be. Then, like a very slow pendulum, the sunrise starts moving down the horizon again.

“The calendar sites will be accurate for tens of thousands of years to come because earth's orbit hasn't changed."

Long before there were calendars made of paper to hang on the wall, there were calendars of stone in the woods to tell time by. Ancient cultures lived according to the seasons too, and, for some, certain days were very important. The people watched the sun - where it rose and set - and marked those days by aligning boulders with a landmark and the rising sun peeking over the horizon in line with them both.

Such Calendar Sites, or Solstice Stones, are scattered all over the Northeast hills. One such place is at High Point State Park in Wantage, New Jersey.

On the way to the High Point Monument, three curious boulders sit across the road from glacial Lake Marcia. They face the lake and the Kittatinny Ridge beyond and, on the equinoxes and summer and winter solstices, they face the rising sun as it beams through a U-shaped notch where two hills meet - all in perfect alignment. They are calendar stones.

On two recent blustery days, I first met Dr. Andrew Smith, educator, ranger, and archeologist, there to show me the stones. A week later, I met Thomas Brannon, retired engineer, surveyor, historian, to answer my questions.

The first stone is the summer solstice marker. The conglomerate rock is pointed, lifted on end. When you stand behind it and look out over the point to the notch “on the first day of summer that golden ball comes up out of the notch and is centered precisely on this pointed top," said Brannon. “If you move your head two inches to one side or the other, the sunrise will shift."

Rather than bulldoze this hulking rock out of the way when the road was built, the park added concrete to its base to stabilize it. “This stone was precariously perched. Somebody had an appreciation of these things," he said.

The next boulder along the roadside is the spring and autumn equinox stone. The sun peeks over this rock as it rises down the horizon from summer into fall, and again as it rises up the horizon from winter into spring. A pillar is added onto the front of this rock. It contains the park plaque.

The third rock, the winter solstice stone, is not right on the road. Take the left fork drive in front of the interpretive center and park. This fine-grained sandstone boulder is near the building. As with the others, stand about 10 feet behind the stoneÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s estimated center. The rock is aligned with the first rays of the sun coming over the notch on the first day of winter, and if you move to one side, you lose it.

In Harriman State Park in New York, just 30 miles away, stones are placed on the horizon instead of facing a mountain notch. Throughout Dutchess and Putnam Counties there are chambers dug into the earth that flood with the first rays of sun on solstice and equinox mornings. “At one location, not only did they build the chamber in the right location, but they built their own hill. I can't understand the thinking of these people. These things are all over and somebody built them," said Smith.

Theories abound. Brannon said the Solstice Stones are part of a calendar system to keep track of periodic visits from one or another group of traders. Trading was a seasonal activity. Furs were trapped in cold weather and traded out in summer.

Smith opts for pagan and, later, Christian, holidays. “Celtic had eight seasons. One was early February like our Groundhog Day, early May, August, end of October that became All Hallow's Eve. “A lot of Christian holidays were placed on the calendar to compete with pagan holidays to take attention away from them during the time when Christian monks tried to convert the pagans," he explained as one possibility.

Hundreds of people still visit the stones on solstices and equinoxes to watch the sunrise in perfect alignment over the boulders and through the notch. There are too many locations for them to be coincidence.

“If you just put a little pile of rock, a heavy rain or storm could destroy it. This way, it's there to last forever and nobody's going to mess with it and foul it up." - Smith.

A mile and a half down Route 23 South, a dirt road leads off to the right toward Rutherford Lake. A ways in, on the left just past a second gate, a large boulder sits atop three piles of slabular rock. This is tripod rock. Some of the rocks in the piles placed under the boulder are a little loose and, being of different rock types, are obviously put there. They may be the original stones set there. “There is no geological explanation. It's a piece of rock pried up in the air. There are three piles of stone set under it. It's very telling that these stones are different," said Brannon.

“The rocks served a purpose much like we use street mileage signs, placed in a way to catch your attention, equidistant like cairns," said Smith. "The Indians had no need for markers; they used the land. The perched rocks may have been used to mark trade routes and setting out territories. Business then was skins. Bronze tools have been found. The Indians had no knowledge of the metal alloys that were found. They had to have been forged."

"People who laid these rocks were great surveyors like the Irish. They allowed for curvature of the earth." - Smith

The rocks are markers on a surveyor's “ley line," a long straight line across the countryside. One ley starts at Pyramid Mountain, New Jersey, and goes to Callicoon, New York. “The big rock at Pyramid Mountain is a survey marker. I'm sure it was established by men," said Brannon. He has seen the two smaller tripods next to the big one although, curiously, no one else has ever admitted seeing the two smaller tripods to this writer, although they are in plain view. “It would seem this wasn't necessary with the big one," he said. “I don't know if the triad stones were supplanted by the big one."

Tom Brannon believes the answer to the tripod rocks lies in land surveying. “My feeling is that local Native Americans interacted with European traders for a long time and that this culture was a changing one for many years. The tripod rocks seem to have been a trail marker," he said. He believes the Celtic and other European parties came to North America before Columbus, and it was they who placed these rocks equidistant in units of European measures.

Thomas Brannon is a member of the Orange County Chapter of the New York State Archeological Society and the New England Antiquities Resource Association in Maine.

Dr. Andrew Smith owns Dutchway Consulting with specialties in archeology, botany and mycology. He teaches adult education courses throughout the region. He is a member of the North American Mycological Association, Botanical Society of America, Institute of Field Archaeologists, listed in Who's WHo in America and Who's Who in Science and Engineering.He also created the Center For Natural and Historical Anomalies.

A few other tripods: Harriman Park at Lake Tiorati. It's a big boulder with natural protuberances on the bottom - two other stones. Pyramid Mountain has three stones. High Point has piles. There is a whole set at Hawke's Nest - 3 or 4, distinctly in a cluster.

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