Rock Castle County – Berea Tracks

LARGE MAN TRACKS

In 1885, Professor J.F. Brown of Berea College, Kentucky was called upon to examine a puzzling find, made 16 miles east of the town of Berea, on Big Hill in Rock Castle County, one of the spurs of the Cumberland Plateau. Near the summit, an old wagon trail cut through a stratum of carboniferous limestone, and removal of earth to widen the trail into a road had exposed a new section of this stratum. As E.A. Allen reported in the American Antiquarian, volume 7, page 39, preserved in the layer were the fossilized impressions of several creatures. What mystified those who witnessed the remains was that among these tracks were two well-preserved prints of a human being. They were described as “good-sized, toes well spread, and very distinctly marked.” It was not until 1930 that further and more detailed investigations were performed, this time by Dr. Wilbur Greely Burroughs, head of the geology department at Berea College. Dr. Burroughs discovered a total of twelve 9 1/2-inch man tracks and portions of others, and confirmed that they had indeed been impressed upon gray Pottsville sandstone dating from the Upper Pennsylvanian period -well over 300 million years old.

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