Chris Lasher
Preserving a legacy
Fast forward nearly one hundred years, and Stahlman’s life’s work—his mysterious scripture rocks—is the stuff of local legend. His legacy inspires curiosity and
Clockwise from left:
Douglas Monroe Stahlman; a peaceful spot along the 1.4-mile trail; entrance signage; panel at Faith Rock.
discussion, and preserving it became the focus of the Jefferson County Historical Society in 2009. Using Stahlman’s unpublished, nineteen-chapter manuscript, The Dedicated Rocks, as a reference, the historical society and Northfork Chapter 29 of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology set out to locate and document his work. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission awarded the historical society a Keystone Historic Preservation Planning Grant to conduct a detailed mapping survey of a concentration of sixty-seven rocks near Port Barnett. The idea to develop the site as an outdoor museum, or heritage park, evolved from the mapping project. In 2014, the Jefferson County Historical Society entered into long-term lease agreements with the owners of the property that contains the sixty-seven rocks that were surveyed, and groundbreaking for the heritage park occurred soon after. Over the next year and a half, a core group of volunteers gave more than 3,800 hours, countless tools, and large machinery to the project. Volunteers cleared and graded 1.4 miles of walking trails and spread 160 tons of gravel. Financial support for Scripture Rocks Heritage Park came from several different sources. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania Lumber Heritage Region, and the Jefferson County Hotel Tax Committee awarded grant funding to the project, and an additional $46,000 was raised from Jefferson County, local businesses, and individual donors. The park opened to the public on June 11, 2016. Trails provide visitors with access to sixty-seven of Stahlman’s inscribed rocks, including Chapel Rock, where Stahlman lived for a time and penned the seven composition notebooks that make up his manuscript.
In addition to the rocks themselves, the park contains twenty interpretive panels that present information about Stahlman’s life and work, lumber history, geology and rock formation, native plants and animals, and a recent archaeological study of a Native American rockshelter found on the park grounds. For a small donation, visitors can pick up a park guide at the trailhead or at the historical society. Scripture Rocks Heritage Park, which was named one of the top ten most interesting places to visit in Pennsylvania in 2016, was visited by just over nine thousand people within the first six months of its opening. After her visit to the park, Carrie Fischer Lepore, Deputy Secretary from the Pennsylvania Office of Marketing and Tourism, said, “We believe that the Scripture Rocks Heritage Park will be a tremendous asset to Jefferson County in terms of recreation and education, and are extremely optimistic about the park’s potential to create a new tourist attraction in the commonwealth.”2 If you aren’t able to visit Scripture Rocks Heritage Park in person, Scripture Rocks: Why Douglas Stahlman Carved His Legacy in Stone offers a careful biog-
raphy of Stahlman and an archaeological analysis of the stone carvings that have been found and identified. It also contextualizes his unorthodox endeavor in the framework of religious movements of his time. Visit ScriptureRocks.com for more information. t
Melinda Meyer is President of Erie Yesterday in Erie, Pennsylvania. She can be reached at erieyesterday@gmail.com. 1 Scripture Rocks Heritage Park AASLH Nomination Form, March 2017. 2 John Straitiff to AASLH Leadership in History Awards Committee, February 2017.
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