Originally published Saturday, February 7, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

When he was a kid, Jim Lynch did time on The Rock.

So did many other Wedgwood neighborhood kids.

So did generations of Boy Scouts, Mountaineers, rock climbers and geology students.

And so did the pre-Seattle Indians, who made the two-story glacial boulder a meeting place as well as center point for local trails. People who know about these things said The Rock was sitting there at 28th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 72nd Street at least 12,059 years before Wedgwood even became Wedgwood (1941).

"We used to ride our bikes on those trails through the woods here," said Lynch, a retired local Realtor who's probably not even as old as the moss on Wedgwood Rock. "We'd bring a sandwich and tuck it in our shirts before climbing to the top and have our lunch up there. But I don't remember all these trees around the rock being this big!"

Of course they weren't. The pine, holly and other trees have been planted around the 75-foot base of Wedgwood Rock by the city and rock neighbors over the past several decades. And just plain folks from Wedgwood have always trimmed the bushes and trees and cut the grass on the little piece of land around The Rock.

Usually I get some pertinent comments from a column subject, but Wedgwood Rock was impertinent as he sat there alongside the road. I did my usual shtick, the humble introduction and the pitch about the "Neighbors" section and how wonderful it was out here in Wedgwood.

"So, how long you been here?" I asked.

Wedgwood Rock just sat there.

"My, but it sure is beautiful here, with all nice shrubs and trees around you. And you certainly have a fine soft green coat of moss, you do!"

Ol' Wedgwood Rock, he didn't say a word. And I figure, this is going to be a harder story than the time I tried to find out why Bill Gates' mansion was taking so long to build.

"Well, Wedgwood . . . I mean, Mr. Rock, you certainly are stonewallin' me. Don't you want to tell me about the good ol' days, when the Indians camped at your feet? Or how about more recently, when the first residents here rallied to save you when they heard reports that developers were going to blast you into enough gravel to pave the entire length of 35th Avenue?

Ol' Wedgwood Rock, he just sat there in stony-faced silence. Not so much as a "No comment" or "Talk to my lawyer." So, I went right up to the house behind where ol' Rock is setting, and I rang the doorbell.

Anna Belle Hayes became my "reliable source." She knows Wedgwood Rock from the old days. Well, at least back to '71 (that's 1971), when she and her late husband moved into the neat little house at 7200 28th Ave. N.E.

"Back then, everyone made a big deal about The Rock," said Hayes. "At Christmastime, they would run an electric cord from our house to a big star on top of The Rock. And all the neighbors' houses would have smaller, lighted stars on their roofs."

Jim Lynch was beyond his Rock-climbing days before Anna Belle moved in, so he wouldn't have been one of the many local kids she warned about climbing The Rock. "They still do it, of course, but we were told that city ordinance set a $100 fine for anyone caught climbing on The Rock," she said. "So I'd go out and warn people about that."

There have been occasions when teenagers have "gone up on top of The Rock at night to smoke their marijuana and have a little fun out there or whatever," Hayes said. Only once in her memory has The Rock been defaced, she noted. "Some kids, I guess, painted symbols on it. But the neighbors got rid of that very fast," she said.

Schoolteachers still bring classes of youngsters to see The Rock. "I love little children, and it's so much fun to see them playing out there and looking up at The Rock," Hayes said. In good weather, adults often come and have mini-picnics in the shade of the big trees alongside The Rock.

There have always been, still are, probably always will be, groups of university students coming to see The Rock, which in Geology 101 terms is known as the Wedgwood Erratic. So-called, it seems, because it's not like most other local rocks. One other like it is up in Coupeville, on Whidbey Island. And there are smaller ones, Rockettes, I guess you'd call them, alongside Aurora Avenue North at Woodland Park. There's even a Rockette, of sorts, in a small landscaped pie-slice of land at 31st Avenue Northeast and Northeast 82nd Street.

But no one else in Seattle has a rock like Wedgwood Rock. It is to this neighborhood what the bell tower is to Ballard, what "Waiting for the Interurban" is to Fremont, what the pergola is to Pioneer Square.

"People come here to take snapshots, even wedding-party pictures, all the time," Hayes said. "And I never have any trouble telling people how to find my house. I just tell them:

"'Just look for The Rock.'"

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.