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Machine No Match for Indian Rock

September 01, 2009 - NORWAY -- It was a valiant effort Friday, but in the end the Komatsu 382 excavator was no match for the massive Indian Rock beside Route 117.

Town officials gathered early in the morning to watch what they hoped would be the successful removal of the rock, which has a deep depression that some people believe American Indians used for grinding corn. The rock has to be removed or blasted to make way for a $1.6 million road reconstruction project by project the Maine Department of Transportation.

Town officials committed themselves earlier this summer to trying to save the rock, with hopes of putting it at the Lake Pennesseewassee picnic area with an accompanying history display. Legend has it that the rock was used by early natives to grind corn or tan hides, but state archaeologists, who have examined it several times over the past 20 years, say there is no evidence that the site was occupied by American Indians in the early 1600s. The rock's deep depression is simply a natural formation, the experts say.

It didn't take long Friday to see that removal efforts weren't going to work.

"It's not moving," Selectman Irene Millett said as she and fellow board member Bruce Cook and Town Manager David Holt stood watching the K&K excavator being pulled back and up off the ground a few feet by the weight of the massive rock. The visible part apparently is the top of a much larger rock that probably extended across the road, officials said.

David Lycette, resident engineer for the MDOT's Highway Program, said the plan was to loosen the rock Friday and eventually move it off site.

Excavator operator Dustin Hackett tried for nearly 30 minutes to budge the rock, to no avail.

"I think that's about it. I don't know if we can do much more," said Lycette, who offered to give town officials several more weeks to come up with another plan.

Dynamite seemed to be the only other option to save the outcropping, but at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars just to ignite the first stick, it was deemed too expensive and dangerous, and a further delay to the reconstruction project.

"Dynamite is not an option," Cook said. "And we don't want to delay the project."

"It's not hard to make a decision when there are no choices," Holt said.

So in the next several weeks, road crews will blast the rock to bits.

The priority is to make the road safe, Holt said, because there have been more than 50 serious accidents on the highway in the past several years.

By Leslie H. Dixon, Staff Writer
Aug 28, 2009, Sun Journal


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