Inspiration for Research
The author first stopped by Pilot Mountain (Andy Griffith’s fictional Mount Pilot) on October 2, 2012. Why? Because the beautiful diffuse glow of twilight colors on Pilot Mountain caught the author’s eye from the expressway.
From the exit on I-52 it only took minutes to reach the top parking lot. Surprisingly, the images taken that evening revealed large stone faces on the mountain. Later a quick search on the internet revealed that President Thomas Jefferson’s father, Peter, and his survey partner Joshua Fry, labeled it The Stonehead on the famous Fry/Jefferson map in 1753.
During a return to the mountain that same week the author encountered an old-timer sitting on a bench in bib overalls at the Marathon Gas Station in Pinnacle, North Carolina. Just like a character from the Andy Griffith Show he said with a thick southern drawl, “The locals here say that you should take your moccasins off within twenty miles of Pilot Mountain out of respect for the sacred landscape.”
Later McKelvey learned the Pilot Mountain also goes by the name, Great Guide.
Those three inspiring factors opened up the research:
● Stone faces
● The Stonehead label on the famous map
● Sacred landscape quote
These three factors above were like rocket fuel that continues to inspire research to this day by McKelvey. Later, the General Management Plan 2018 for Pilot Mountain State Park was found about the rock art on the mountain. This added more fuel to the research but became very controversial.
Is Pilot Mountain a hidden-in-plain-sight prehistoric Mt. Rushmore? The Pilot Mountain State Park General Management Plan of 2018 (p. 5) reveals a table that says the mountain has highly significant prehistoric rock art, beyond that there is no explanation, image or footnote. Clearly more research is needed!
Rock Art: A site that consists of drawings, sketches, or engravings executed by prehistoric peoples on stone (such as rock outcrops and the walls of rock shelters and caves). – NC Park Service (2018). [1]
[1] North Carolina State Park system wide document, Appendix D, Resource Theme Definitions, pp 93 – 96
