I live right up the street from an attraction called “America’s Stonehenge”. Is this really an archeological site, or did some melvin just make this in his backyard many years ago?
Complicated question. There really are large stone constructions there, but exactly who built them and why is the subject of controversy. The official line is that they were built by a settler named Pattee, and were for years called “Pattee’s Caves”. Against this, opponents claim that Pattee didn’t have all the sons he’s claimed to have, and that most of the constructions don’t make sense as Colonial buildings.
On the other hand, back around the 1920’s (I think), the site was pretty creatively “reconstructed”, so it’s hard to know exactly what was there originally. They’ve been searching for very early photos of the site to try and figure it out.
There have been all sorts of contenders – various folks have claimed that the site was the work of Phoenicians, Irish monks (the “Celi Dei”), Vikings, Romans, and God knows what else – everybody except the local Indians, I note. The present name “America’s Stonehenge” replaces the earlier name “Mystery Hill”, ever since it was noted that the site was surrounded by a very low palisade of stones (you can step across them – this ain’t like the British Stonehenge) forming an irregular closed curve. It’s claimed that, if you stand at a central site, you can see prominent sones marking significant sunrises and sunsets. They’ve gone so far as to erect a platform at the center, and cut down alleyways through the trees so you can watch these events.
My take: I can’t doubtr their sincerity, but there’s nothing significant to mark the “ccenter” location, anbd the “prominent” stones aren’t all that prominent.
There are details – there’s a stylized carved “running deer” onone stone in an underground passage. There’s a supposed :“eye” on another. There’s a human-sized stone with a carved groove around it ominously called the “sacrifice stone”. Orthodox historians say it’s a lye-leaching stone, made to extract lye from ashes. There’s a supposed “hidden speaking tube” under the sacrificial stone, where a person hidden in the underground chamber can project his voice, making it sound as if the gods are talking. And so on.
One of the more interesting aspects to me is that H.P. Lovecraft visited the site, and it may have helped inspire descriptions in his stories. It’s pretty compelling – H.P. does mention stone constructions for Indian rituals in a few stories. Curiously, Lovecraft annotator S.T. Joshi doesn’t believe this, although he never says why.
My take on all this: It’s a nice place for a walk in the woods in the Spring, Summer, or Fall, and to speculate. The site has been worked over by the Great Ireland folks, which makes it hard to tell what’s original. There certainly seems to be too much, even with that, to explain this as the work of settlers, who probably had better things to do, but the connections to Old Europe and Stonehenge, and the existence of astronomical alignments seems pretty weak. If these works are old, I don’t see why they couldn’t be the work of the local indians, who certainly were there.