Track Rock Gap

One of the best-known of the petroglyph, or marked stone, sites in Georgia. The six table-sized soapstone boulders contain hundreds of symbols carved or pecked into their surface. Archaeologists have speculated dates for the figures from the Archaic Period (8,000 to 1,000 B.C.) to the Cherokee Indians who lived here until the 19th Century. No one knows the exact meaning of the symbols or glyphs which represent animals, birds, tracks and geometric figures. The earliest written account (1834) was by Dr. Matthew Stephenson, who was director of the U.S. Branch Mint in Dahlonega. One of the favorite stories about Track Rock Gap was recorded by ethnographer James Mooney who gathered Cherokee stories. The Cherokee called this site Datsu'nalasgun'ylu (where there are tracks) and Degayelun'ha (the printed or branded place). Cherokee stories include an explanation that hunters paused in the gap and amused themselves by carving the glyphs; the marks were made in a great hunt when the animals were driven through the gap, and that the tracks were made when the animals were leaving the great canoe after a flood almost destroyed the world and while the earth and rocks were soft.