Plymouth Rock is a Adventure Place For Vacations. Plymouth Rock is an American icon, a symbol of intrepid discovery, liberty, and freedom of conscience.The stone itself is granite, probably from a formation known as the Dedham granite, formed608 million years ago (give or take 17 million years)—that is, a long time before 1620! The Rock was picked up from this formation at a spot south or west of Boston and transported by a glacier to Plymouth about 20,000 years ago. The spot it left was somewhere in the terrane(specific geologic area) called Atlantica, which surrounds Boston. Geologists who study plate tectonics say that many millions of years ago there was a huge continent called Pangaea (pan-JEE-uh) which split into eastern and western parts, the eastern becoming Europe and Africa, the western part North America. The Dedham granite is found mostly in Africa, so it is surprising to consider that Plymouth Rock came over from another continent just as the Pilgrims did, only millions of years earlier.
History of Plymouth Rock
The location of the Plymouth Rock (more specifically, Dedham granodiorite, a glacial erratic), at the foot of Cole’s Hill allegedly passed from generation to generation in the first century after the Pilgrims’ landing in 1620. When plans were afoot to build a wharf at the Pilgrim’s landing site in 1741, a 94-year-old Elder of the church named Thomas Faunce (who was the town record keeper for most of his adult life) identified the precise rock his father had told him was the first solid land the Pilgrims set foot upon. (The Pilgrims first landed, however, near the site of modernProvincetown on the tip of Cape Cod in November 1620 before moving to Plymouth). The rock is located about 650 feet (200 m) from where it is generally accepted that the initial settlement was built, on nearby Leyden Street leading up toward Burial Hill.The upper portion of the rock was later relocated from Plymouth’s meetinghouse to Pilgrim Hall in 1834. In 1859, the Pilgrim Society began building a Victorian canopy, designed by Hammatt Billings, at the wharf over the lower portion of the rock. Following the structure’s completion in 1867, the top of the rock was moved from Pilgrim Hall back to its original wharf location in 1880 and rejoined to the lower portion. The date “1620” was carved into the rock.
In 1920, the rock was found and the waterfront rebuilt to a design by noted landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff, with a waterfront promenade behind a low seawall, in such a way that when the rock was returned to its original site, it would be at water level. The care of the rock was turned over to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a new very sober Roman Doric portico designed by McKim, Mead and White for viewing the tide-washed rock protected by gratings. During the rock’s many journeys throughout the town of Plymouth, numerous pieces were taken, bought and sold Historical Tour in USA. Today approximately 1/3 of the top portion remains. It is estimated that the original Rock weighed 20,000 lb (9,100 kg). Although some documents indicate that tourists or souvenir hunters chipped it down, no pieces have been noticeably removed since 1880. Today there are pieces in Pilgrim Hall Museum as well as in the Patent Building in the Smithsonian. In 1835 Alexis De Tocqueville, a French author traveling throughout the United States, wrote,”This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic.”A great piece of the Rock is set on a pedestal in the cloister of historic Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims on Brooklyn Heights. The Church formed by a merger of Plymouth Church and Church of the Pilgrims was once pastored by Henry Ward Beecher.
Current status of Plymouth Rock
Today Plymouth Rock is managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as part of Pilgrim Memorial State Park. From the end of May to Thanksgiving Day, Pilgrim Memorial is staffed by park interpreters who inform visitors of the history of Plymouth Rock and answer questions.
