![]() In August of 1987, he was given a lead that something big was about to happen at Enchanted Rock. Ira lived very close to the park for some years and was a writer for the Highlander newspaper in Marble Falls. However, local artist Ira Kennedy, who has a long connection with the park, told me some other stories. It would not be fair to say these sounds and visual effects have never happened, but I can say they have not been noted of late. Native Americans considered the place either haunted or magical or sacred, which is why the place is called Enchanted Rock. I spoke with people who live or have lived in the park over the last 50 years, climbers who have regularly been in the park at sunrise and sunset for those same years, and park staff, and none has heard ever heard any sounds, or seen glowing around the Rock. Various posts on the internet claim that after a rainstorm the surface of the Rock glows with a green hue two meters above the surface, or that the Rock glows with a green-blue hue right at sunrise and sunset. Early reports of the Rock said that it was made of platinum, or that there was a spring on top which gushed out water falling down all its sides making it look like metal. There are stories of the Rock creaking at night, presumably from the cooling of rocks heated by sunlight during the day. Another story is that of a white woman, escaped from her Indian captors, whose screams are still heard at night. Another is that an Indian chief sacrificed his daughter on the Rock, and now walks the summit forever as punishment. All the tribe were killed, and their ghosts haunt the area to this day. One is that a tribe of brave warriors was attacked by another tribe with their last defense on Enchanted Rock. A historical marker about the skirmish was placed on Enchanted Rock in 1936, and although this plaque is no longer on the Rock, the story is told on a marker along FM 965 where it joins US Hwy 16 northeast of the park. Hays was a Texas Ranger for only six years before he moved west, became Sheriff of San Francisco County in 1850, and founded the city of Oakland. The depiction of the background in the painting does not perfectly represent Enchanted Rock, but this likely came from the imagination of the painter. This painting eventually made its way the Official Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco and can be seen on their website. This story has been considered legendary because there is little evidence to support it, but Former Texas Ranger Foundation President Joe Davis told me that Hays once commissioned a painting depicting the skirmish. ![]() Legend has it that he held off the Comanche for three hours until being rescued by his fellow Rangers, or perhaps when the Indians tired of the fight. Hays and his company of Rangers were surveying near Crabapple Creek when he was cut off by a band of Comanche raiders and took refuge on the summit of Enchanted Rock. One of the more famous legends at E-Rock is of a battle between Texas Ranger John Coffee (Jack) Hays and Indians in the fall of 1841. The colony of Friedrichsburg, founded in 1846 by German immigrants from the area of Montabaur, was originally to be established north of the Llano River, but its present location was settled instead because of the hostility of the Comanche. The Comanche only came to dominate the area in the mid-1700s, and they conflicted with the Spanish frequently after destroying the mission Santa Cruz de San Saba in 1758.
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