Ohio River Petroglyph Rock

Grand jury indicts Ironton man over Indian Head Rock
Jun 19, 2008 @ 09:10 PM
By DAVID E. MALLOY The Herald-Dispatch

GREENUP, Ky. -- The battle between Ohio and Kentucky over the Indian Head Rock took a more serious twist Thursday when a Greenup County grand jury indicted an Ironton man on a felony charge of removing an antiquity.
The charge carries a possible prison sentence of from one to five years upon conviction.
Steve Shaffer, an Ironton resident, spent three years diving in the Ohio River for the eight-ton sandstone rock before finding it last summer in 16 feet of water and bringing it out of the river last September.
"I'm quietly amazed," Shaffer said Thursday at the charge against him. "I guess they consider me the ring leader. There was no criminal intent. This is just bizarre."
Shaffer and some divers from the Huntington area would dive in the Ohio River looking for the rock that has been submerged since 1920.
"We turned it over to the city of Portsmouth," he said.
The rock currently is stored in a city of Portsmouth garage. "A number of people are coming to see it."
The state of Kentucky wants to put the rock back in the river, Shaffer said. "It's ludicrous."
Greenup Commonwealth's Attorney Clifford Duvall told The Associated Press the case is not about the fate of the rock, but whether it was removed without a proper permit.
"What's important is that all of these things be protected and that the law of Kentucky be observed," he said.
Ohio State Rep. Todd Book, D-McDermott, said the indictment "seems a bit out of control."
The city of Portsmouth was going to remove the rock in 1908, he said.
"For them to do this, I don't know," Book said. "They must have too much time on their hands. I hate to see it go down this path. There's a fun way to resolve this, but they haven't chosen to do that."
"This rock tells stories about the people who settled this land, those who lived here, worked here and left their legacies for future generations to uphold," Book had said earlier. "We want to preserve history; the people fighting this in Kentucky just want to return the rock to its watery grave at the bottom of the Ohio River. This is too important a part of Portsmouth's history to allow that to happen."
Book has proposed having an annual competition between Kentucky and Ohio residents to determine who would get to display the rock for a year. He said there could be a rafting competition, a game of rock, paper, scissors, a tug of war or something along those lines on an annual basis.
The border battle over the rock has garnered national media attention in the New York Times and the "CBS Evening News." Officials in Frankfort have asked for the rock to be returned while officials in Columbus have met to ask Kentucky to relinquish its claim to the rock. The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1800s ruled that the Ohio River belongs to Kentucky up to the low water mark on the Ohio side in 1792. A series of dams has raised the river level over the years.
Shaffer admits the rock was closer to the Kentucky shore than the Ohio shore.
"It was lost ... forgotten," he said. "It was a lost piece of history. We wanted to solve the mystery. People from Portsmouth would go over and carve their names or initials on the rock. There are stories about it in the Portsmouth paper."
The rock also has a crude face that some claim is a petroglyph carved by an unknown American Indian. It was registered as a protected archeological object with Kentucky state government in 1986, according to The Associated Press.
Shaffer said an expert called in by the state of Kentucky, Dr. Fred Coy Jr. of Louisville, believes the carving isn't native American.
"He believes it was carved with metal tools," Shaffer said. "It's just not native American, it's graffiti. The names (on the rock) are from Portsmouth people."