The rock was carved and put on the trail—later named the Hawthorne Trail—as a marker to indicate the way to a Spanish block fortress along the trail in the 1700s.

In 1955, local boys Dess Oliver and Jimmy Arline heard about the rock from another Grady County man who had found the rock in a local site known as Blowing Cave. The rock was believed to have been thrown in the cave by local Native Americans.

The local man who had told Oliver and Arline about the rock wanted it on his gravesite when he died. Oliver and Arline felt the rock had local significance and received permission from the deceased man’s family to take the rock to the Cairo Public Library.

Oliver and Arline took the rock to the FSU Anthropology Department with the library’s permission. Once its authenticity was verified, the rock was given to the Grady County History Museum.