Visiting Indian Rock Again

There are number of rock exposures in York County that are named for assorted reasons. The highest point in the county is Stone Head East and its neighbor Stone Head, both located within South Mountain northwest of Dillsburg.

Have you heard of Buzzard’s Roost in the Hellam Hills overlooking the Susquehanna River?

York County contains at least two High Rock locations, one in the Pigeon Hills and the other in a deep valley in southern York County. And there are many rocks that an individual or family may have nick-named for their own reference. This blog talks about one of the famous named rocks known as Indian Rock, along the Codorus Creek in Spring Garden Township.

I wrote about Indian Rock in a York Daily Record blog several years ago, but new research completed over this past winter prompted me to update everyone. I do most of my field work in the winter months when the ground cover is non-existent and certain crawling animals on the ground are hibernating. My high-school friend and now President of the Codorus Valley Historical Society in Jefferson asked me to show him Indian Rock. Tom and I have been on other excursions over the last several years exploring unknown historical sites that he dug up in research literature. Tom also invited Society member and historian Staffin Hamme to join us.

At that point we had questions about the rock, its history and how has the rock changed over time. Staffin went to work researching the name Indian Rock and documented when it was first mentioned in literature. The first mention of Indian Rock was in an article dated March 24, 1939, which included a picture. The article was written as the dam project was starting to protect York for future flooding. Indian Rock Dam was completed in 1942.

Staffin did find reference to the same rock being named Pulpit Rock, the first in the George R. Prowell “History of York County” book published in 1907. In this article, it states that a William H. Miller, owned three hundred acres of farmland below Willow Bridges.

“Pulpit Rock stands along the banks of the Codorus at the base of White Oak Plains. According to a tradition circulated by the early residents of this vicinity, Pulpit Rock was once occupied by an Indian Queen who addressed Shawanese warriors, her own tribe, after they had been defeated by the Susquehannocks. She urged them to sharpen their battle axes, make spears and Indian darts and with these implements of war, together with bows and arrows, defend their rights and liberties against the other red men who had driven them westward from the banks of the Susquehanna.

In and around these favored haunts, George Miller, the ornithologist of York, and Prof. A. Wanner, city superintendent of schools, have spent many hours in interesting recreation gathering implements of war and the chase, manufactured by the untutored Indians who first occupied this region, caught the fish that were found abundantly in the Codorus Creek, and shot the game in the adjoining woods.

Stafflin continues in his report of January 2022:
“This rock formation is located in Spring Garden Township, York County, Pennsylvania on United States Corps of Engineers property. It is about thirty feet south of the combined South and West Branches of the Codorus Creek which is the border between Spring Garden Township and West Manchester Township. Geographic coordinates of the south end of this formation are 39.924488, -76.751235.

This photo was taken looking north.

Since the first record of it being called Indian Rock did not occur until the dam was proposed by the Corps of Engineers, it may be that the Corps of Engineers may have been the first to call it “Indian Rock”.

There have been numerous articles written about this location since 1907. The picture that I first saw of Indian Rock appeared in the “Geology of York County” book written by George Stose and Anna Jonas, published by the Pennsylvania Geologic Survey in 1939. The authors did not give it a title, but only referred to it as an anticline in the Chickies Formation.

A similar picture appeared in the 1944 United State Geological Survey Professional Paper 204 authored by George and Anna Stose (yes George and Anna became married after the 1939 publication). The only difference in the photographs was that the gate was open in the later one.

Our team was interested in doing some physical research of Indian Rock such as how high above the Codorus Creek is the rock located, what is its height, and how much has the landscape immediately around the rock changed in the past 80 years.

So, we got permission from the landowners, The U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers – Indian Rock to access the rock and clear away small trees and brush on the south side of the rock. Why the south side? That was the end of the rock that the two geologic photographs featured.

After spending several hours of diligent challenging work of brush cutting, pulling and raking, we exposed the south end of the rock void of most of the vegetation. We surveyed the area determining that Indian Rock is about twenty-five feet above the Codorus Creek. The height of the rock at its highest point at the south end is twelve feet.

Indian Rock is composed of a metamorphic rock known as quartzite. Quartzite is a rock that was formed by heat and pressure acting on sandstone. The rock belongs to the Chickies Formation, layers of rock that are 541 million years old. We looked for petroglyphs on the rock but did not observe any. We did not bother the soil too much in search of artifacts, but we knew stone tools have been collected there in earlier years.

A number of pictures were taken from our team shooting in various directions to determine the change in ground level around the south end. Some soil buildup has occurred on the southeastern side. The York Water Company’s settling ponds are located nearby in that direction and evidence of regolith movement is present. We figure the largest floods to occur along the Codorus Creek here had negligible effect on ground elevation on the west side. Ken Frazer did do a comparison of correlating the rock layers between the 1944 and present pictures which indicated the change in the ground level.

Finally, as a result of our research this past winter on Indian Rock, Tom Yingling and I spoke to the 5th grade students at Indian Rock Elementary School about the history and geology of this fascinating landmark that still holds historic secrets. Each one of the teachers and the principal received a piece of Chickies quartzite for their desk!

-Jeri Jones