Grinding Rock

Grinding Rock. . Native Americans are understood to have used this large rock for grinding acorns, nuts, or grains, and preparing other foods. The several holes are evidence of long term use. This rock may have been close to Native American encampments located near the mouth of nearby Clear Creek. Abundant salmon runs congregated at the month of the creek and would have been an attractive source of food. Fall encampment is also harvest time for the acorns and other grains of the Willamette Valley and would have been ground to flour in these holes during this time. No other evidence of Native habitation have been discovered on this Historic site. , Once harvested, the acorns were dried in the open air. Women then pounded the acorns into meal from which they would make soup or mush, often using a rock like this one displayed. Natives differ on the use of the name "grinding rock.' Some prefer to call such rocks "pounding rocks," since acorns were really pounded into meal rather than ground. Others call them "bedrock mortars," because the rocks served as a mortar agains which women pounded the dried acorns using a stone pestle. This process left holes in the rock over many generations of use. , Winding down close by from this stone was the trail to the river that was eventually developed into the wagon road leading to Horace Baker's slack-line ferry. Evidence of the wagon road extends along the hillside just inside the tree line from the shed to the Pioneer Church. , Passing the Grinding Rock, a branch trail now leads to the restaurant and up to the cliff face. On the way, there are several remains of quarried rocks showing evidence of drilling and cleaving.