Red Bird River Petroglyphs: the carved rock that fell onto KY 66

The inscribed face was about 5½ feet high and 20 feet long, with sharp, linear carvings that the authors of Rock Art of Kentucky called “different from any of the previously reported Kentucky petroglyphs.” Nobody has dated them: a state marker credits a legendary Cherokee chief named Red Bird, but the Kentucky Historical Society itself has said there are no reliable dates, and writers have described the marks as possibly Native, colonial, or both.

That gap is why this story carries no years. The site, 15CY51, went on the National Register in September 1989. Building and widening KY 66 undercut the face, and on Dec. 7, 1994, the block fell onto the road at Lower Red Bird; two days later it was moved to Rawlings–Stinson Park in Manchester, where it sits roofed and fenced.

It was taken off the Register in 2003. A sign at the park claims eight Old World alphabets on the stone, a fringe claim scholars reject. It isn’t the Red Bird River Shelter (15CY52) across the river. The map pin is the original riverside site, rounded to two decimals.