General Rosecrans Rock set in place last Wednesday on Sunbury Square

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

A glacial boul­der base for the Gen­eral William Starke Rose­crans’ Memo­r­ial Statue is now located on the future site of the statue on Sun­bury Vil­lage Square. It has had a long jour­ney since its for­ma­tion in north­ern Ontario.

An anony­mous donor gave the boul­der to the statue project in 2010 with the con­di­tion it be moved from the donor’s prop­erty quickly so it would not inter­fere with the sale of the property.

Stacy Wills of Eit­els Tow­ing and men from the Rose­crans Head­quar­ters and the Big Wal­nut Area His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety moved the boul­der to a tem­po­rary loca­tion on Tom Paul’s prop­erty, while mem­bers of the statue com­mit­tee con­tin­ued to raise funds and worked on the brick walk­way to the statue.

On Wednes­day morn­ing, July 25, Rose­crans’ Rock was brought to Sun­bury by Eit­els Tow­ing and placed on the pre­pared base by a crew from East­land Crane.

Big Wal­nut Area His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety mem­ber and geol­o­gist Chuck Grapes researched the boul­der and deter­mined the boul­der is an igneous rock and formed from ancient vol­canic magma prob­a­bly more than 2.5 bil­lion years ago.

“I would describe the rock type as a gab­broic anorthosite,” Grapes said. “It’s very sim­i­lar to the rocks brought back from the moon by our astro­nauts dur­ing the Apollo Space Program.”

The boul­der was brought from north­ern Ontario to Cen­tral Ohio dur­ing the Wis­con­sin glacial period that occurred approx­i­mately 110,000 to 10,000 years ago. As the glacial ice melted the boul­der was dropped in place at the sur­face. Geol­o­gists call these rocks glacial drop stones or glacial erratics.

Grapes esti­mated the size of the boul­der to be more than 25 tons, which eas­ily places it in the top five largest glacial errat­ics found in the state. The largest glacial erratic found in Ohio is located just east of Sun­bury off Hart­ford Road.

“Of fine museum qual­ity, the boul­der is com­pa­ra­ble to the glacial erratic located in front of the geol­ogy museum at Orton Hall on the OSU cam­pus,” Grapes said.

The com­pleted bronze eques­trian statue of Gen­eral Rose­crans will be mounted on top of the boul­der; a plaque will be on the north face of the boulder.

Over $10,000 in com­mem­o­ra­tive bricks has been sold for the walk­way to the statue. The engraved bricks have been stored wait­ing for the boul­der to be positioned.

There is still time for area res­i­dents to pur­chase addi­tional bricks to honor their fam­ily or loved ones.

Of the esti­mated $173,000 needed for the bronze eques­trian statue and walk­way only $72,500 is left to be raised.

Dona­tions to the statue can be made through the Big Wal­nut Area His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety which is a 501©(3) orga­ni­za­tion so the dona­tions are tax deductible.

Infor­ma­tion about the bricks is avail­able in the brochure holder at the statue site and in the Myers Inn Museum. The Myers Inn is open from 12 noon to 3 p.m. Thurs­days, Fri­days, Sun­days, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sat­ur­days. To learn more about the statue go to < RosecransHeadquarters.org > and click on the Statue button.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.