The tale of the Pilgrims and their rock is an enticing one. As the story goes, the Pilgrims landed(?) upon Plymouth Rock when they arrived in Massachusetts in 1620. If you've ever been to the spot, you may have been a little disappointed by the saltwater taffy infested tourist trap. This feeling of betrayal is only heightened when you find the rock, and find it to be quite small. It's nothing like the veritable island we in the San Francisco Bay Area refer to as The Rock (aka Alcatraz). What Plymouth Rock does have in common with The Rock are the bars. Plymouth Rock rests within a little McKim, Meade and White designed prison. The little open air canopy perches on the coast and keeps the rock in place while allowing the tide to wash over it.
Inspirational might be too strong a word, yet, the rock is fine. For a more vivid description of the rock and its history than I could cobble together, I recommend John McPhee's "Travels of the Rock" from his book Irons in the Fire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997). I am saddened that my library seems to have every McPhee tome except this one, but the kind folks at the Princeton University Press have excerpted a few chapters on their website:Plymouth Rock is a glacial erratic at rest in exotic terrane. When Mayflower, an English merchant ship, approached the rock, in 1620, the rock, like the ship, had recently been somewhere else. Heaven knew where. Some geologists have said that the rock is Laurentian granite, from north of the St. Lawrence River (Loring, 1920). Most American geologists have preferred a provenance closer to home: Cape Ann, for example, north of Boston (Carnegie Institution, 1923); or the region of Cohasset, south of Boston (Shimer, 1951); or even the bed of Plymouth Bay (Mather, 1952). Wherever the boulder came from, it was many times larger in 1620 than it is today.
It was also in one piece. In 1774, the rock was split in two, horizontally, like a bagel. There were those who feared and those who hoped that the break in the rock portended an irreversible rupture between England and the American colonies. If so, the lower half was the Tory half, for it stayed behind, while the upper part was moved from the harborside to Liberty Pole Square for the specific purpose of stirring up lust for independence. Scarce was independence half a century old when a new portentous split occurred, in the upper, American, rock. It broke, vertically, into two principal parts, shedding fragments to the side. Eventually, the two halves of the upper part were rejoined by common mortar, containing glacial pebbles from countless sources, and the rock as a whole was reconstructed. The upper part was returned to the waterfront, where a thick filling of mortar was slathered on the lower part, and Plymouth Rock -- with its great sutured gash appearing like a surgical scar -- was reassembled so that it would be, to whatever extent remained possible, a simulacrum of the landmark that was there in 1620.
In the course of the twentieth century, the mortar did not hold. Pebbles fell out. Chunks. Despite a canopy over the rock (McKim, Mead & White, 1921), water got into the great crack, froze, and wedged against the bonding force with pressures as high as two thousand pounds per square inch. The rock could not stay whole, and on August 7, 1989, in an item disseminated by the Associated Press, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management announced that the oldest symbol of the New World was in dire need of a mason.McPhee also introduces a discussion that I'm sure none of you have ever considered--the relationship of the rock's origins to that of the Pilgrims. The rock is a migrant too! In some circumstances, personification of a boulder might be a stretch, but he really pulls it off:
After the theory of continental glaciation was developed and accepted, in the nineteenth century, geologists reviewing the story of Plymouth took pleasure in pointing out that the rock had travelled, too: "The Pilgrims' Rock is . . . itself an older pilgrim than those who landed on it" (Adams, 1882). "Plymouth Rock is a bowlder from the vicinity of Boston, having accomplished its pilgrimage long before the departure of the Mayflower from Holland" (Wright, 1905, "The Ice Age in North America and Its Bearings Upon the Antiquity of Man").
The conclusion is profound:
A couple of hundred million years later, as the Atlantic opened, bits and pieces of original America stuck to Europe and rode east. The Outer Hebrides, for example, are said to derive from the northern North American continental core.
The converse was true as well. Stuck to North America, fragments of Europe stayed behind. Baltimore, for example. Nova Scotia. A piece of Staten Island. The part of Massachusetts that includes Plymouth and Boston is now understood to derive from overseas. If from Europe, part of New England could be part of Old England, a New Old England in an Old New England or an Old Old England in a New New England. The Mayflower people landed where they left.
Isn't that always the way.
--g'brarian
For more information about Plymouth Rock: A nod to the geology: Plymouth Rock is a boulder of Dedham Granodiorite, carried to the Plymouth site during the last ice age by the continental glacier and dropped as a glacial erratic, part of its moraine. Usually granodiorite, a kin of granite, is strong, but boulders subjected to the rigors of a glacier ride can be damaged. The repeated freezing and stress can weaken the rock's joints and create fractures; these existing fractures can be widened. As a result, Plymouth Rock has broken several times since the landing.
General Geology of Plymouth County
Pilgrim Hall
