Gully Oven

Gully Oven - Lebanon Maine

11/9/2013

Warning! A lot of pictures in this post, this place was far to cool to not take this many pictures. Also note the above picture, that is the look of someone who decided it wasn't a good idea to wear proper foot wear for crawling around in the woods... I had to rescue her.

It turns out that not only is this site beautiful but it is very significant to the town of Lebanon. I'll probably do more research on it when I'm less busy because as far as I can tell there isn't much data on it, or at least not a lot within reach of Google.

She got scared again...

There was a small brook that ran through the gully. I assume it's the brook that carved this place out in the first place. Some one had laid out a small path of stones to walk across the brook. How nice of them!

These carvings interest me. They don't seem like the normal dumb high schoolers carving their "loves" name in a wall. 

Some even have intricate borders drawn around them.

This panorama is horrible, but it was taken inside the gully itself. According to a few websites I found this is where a young kidnapped boy was taken during the French Indian wars. They kept him here for several days until they eventually traveled north towards Canada. The interesting part of this story is who the boy was. His name was Philip Door, who you might know as one of the original founders of the town of Lebanon Maine! As well as this camp site it's rumored that the rock walls around the park itself were originally laid out by the natives who camped here.

This doesn't do justice to how big it was inside. It was taken on top of a huge moss covered rock on the side of the gully.

The entire gully is covered in beautiful rock formations, carved out by the small stream that runs through the middle of it. Not only is this place for small town historians, but it would also be a good site for a geologist. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of it, but above the gully was a ~20 foot tall sheer wall with multiple layers in it.

On our way out we found this interesting memorial to a local who had died in 1967. No information on it was around except for what was inscribed on it.

UPDATE:

So after some research we found a very interesting article that brought up a few facts about the Gully itself. As it turns out my curiosity about the carvings was well founded. They are actually the signatures of some 19th century artists who frequented the location. 

Also there was a violinist who came to the gully and played shows in the cave for local residents. When asked about why he said it was because he liked the unique harmonics of the rock.

Also... Geologists attempted to keep the location hidden in the early 1900's because of it's incredibly rare rock formations. If you visit it you can certainly see why, the stone there is beautiful.