The "What's In A Name - Part II?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Sometime in the early 1980s my youngest son Tad was a Cub Scout.  It was the middle of the summer when a father of another Cub Scout, Tim, asked me, along with another dad, Sam, if we would be interested in joining he and his son Ben in building a raft to float down the mighty Susquehanna River.  Tad was ready to go as was his other friends Ben and Alex, so we became part of a father-son group who were going to plan an adventure roiling down the river.  I wasn't overly excited, since I am not a strong swimmer and the Susquehanna River is fast moving, but I didn't want to miss the fun.  We got a few wooden skids from a grocery store and spent a Saturday building the raft.  The following week-end Tim towed the raft, which was on a trailer, to the Susquehanna River which was about fifteen miles from our homes.  The six of us managed to get the raft into the river at the town of Columbia, Pennsylvania.  Our mission was to float downstream to a small island, and then float to shore.  We had oars to help us if needed.  Sam lucked out and got to drive the trailer downstream to wait for us.  We all had life-vests in place and sunscreen slathered on us.  As I look back on the adventure, I must have been INSANE!  The mighty Susquehanna is called "Mighty" for a reason.  Many people have lost their lives on the river over the years.  But, as you can see, we all made it.  The water was near still that day in August when we took our journey.  We used the oars to steer as well as row and at times push off the bottom to propel ourselves.  We landed on a small island where we went ashore and the boys began looking for arrowheads.  You see, this river was known as a hunting ground for the Susquehannock Indian tribe.  Depending on the season, it is well known that you might be able to see petroglyph sites along the river.  

Rock art or petroglyphs found near Safe Harbor, Pennsylvania.

Petroglyphs are rock art consisting of symbolic designs that Native Americans incised or cut into bedrock outcrops or small islands.  Indigenous rock art is found throughout the world with many examples in the lower Susquehanna Valley.  No one really knows what the symbols actually mean or who carved them or how old they might be, but they are interesting and fascinating and many have offered their opinions as to age, who may have made them or what they mean.  The lower Susquehanna River Valley has no standing or reconstructed structures or visible traces of prehistoric sites, but there is a multitude of petroglyphs on rocks in the river.  

The Susquehanna River runs low, exposing many rocks,
near Columbia, Pennsylvania.

The secret is to find the right time to view them.  If the river is running high due to weather or perhaps some of the power plants opening extra gates to generate more power, the rocks on the river are covered and cannot be seen.  The summer months, when their is little rain, is the best time to have a chance to view the petroglyphs.  Most of the petroglyphs that were carved into the bedrock along the river are near Safe Harbor and is accessible only by boat.  Care is needed due to the swift water below the Safe Harbor dam where many of the rocks that carry the petroglyphs have been found.  One group of seven mica schist (coarse grained) rocks holds about 300 carvings at that location.  The Safe Harbor carvings are believed to have been carved by Shenk's Ferry Native Americans using simple stone tools over a period from 500 to 1,000 years ago.  

Petroglyph expert, Paul Nevin, inspects some
of the carvings on Conestoga Rock in the
Susquehanna River below Safe Harbor Dam.

The carvings were originally discovered in the 1860s by the Linnaean Society of Lancaster, but thought to be insignificant graffiti.  Today's archaeologists have found them to be much more that graffiti.  They are said to be some of the finest examples of Native American carvings in the Northeast United States.  Four of the carvings correspond exactly to the position of the sun for the spring and fall equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices.  The carvings also include concentric circles, human footprints and faces as well as elk, martens and other animals that once populated the area.   Almost 200 plaster casts have been made of the petroglyphs while quite a few sections of rock that contain petroglyphs were cut from the bedrock.  The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg holds many of these samples as does the Conestoga Area historical Society and the Blue Rock Heritage Center in Washington Boro.  The designs of seven of the Safe Harbor petroglyphs are inlaid in the tile in the entrance lobby of Pennsylvania's state Capital.  I often wonder, if I had known what I know today, if any of the boys on our raft trip may have come upon a few petroglyphs as they wandered on the island in the Susquehanna.  Well, we made it safely to land and got the raft back to Tim's home.  Our Cub Scout journey was a learning experience for all of us, even though we may not have known it.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.