LORAIN COUNTY, Ohio (WJW) – An excavation crew made an unusual discovery at a construction site in Lorain County, that tells the story of Northeast Ohio’s prehistoric past.
The crew was digging sanitary sewer lines for a new housing development along Indian Hollow Road outside Elyria on Friday, when they hit something large under a couple of feet of soil.
“It amazed me and I’ve been working here 10 years,” said Robert Woods of DiGioia Suburban Excavating.
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As Woods kept digging with his excavator, he discovered that what he hit was a boulder that was deposited in Northeast Ohio by a glacier thousands of years ago.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before. I mean, it’s the biggest rock we’ve dug up,” he said.
The outdoor experiences manager for the Lorain County Metro Parks suspects the boulder was swept here 12,000 to 14,000 years ago by glaciers formed in Canada, that carved out the landscape of Ohio and formed Lake Erie and other large bodies of water.
“There is some granite cliff or mountain top in Canada that is missing some rocks,” said Bev Walborn with a chuckle.
She told us the large stone is known as a glacial erratic, and she suspects it is a form of granite.
“We mostly have sedimentary rock like shale and sandstone here, but up in Canada, granite is the rock that’s found up there. So, those big, huge mountains of ice pulled that rock along with them and as the glaciers started to melt and started dropping items and off it went,” she said.
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Supervisors for the construction company have not yet decided if the ancient boulder will be kept as a centerpiece of the new neighborhood or will be moved off-site.
Students of geology say what Woods dug up on Friday was more than just a big rock.
“It’s a great find and I think it reminds us of the history and our place on this planet and what happened in the course of time before we even stepped foot here,” said Walborn.
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