Here is an article I came across today from the Rockwall Community Profile and Membership Directory. The artcile first appeared in 2008 and can be found online in it’s entirey here.
Below is the article in it’s entirety.
Rockwall’s Prehistoric Origins Is the city’s namesake rock wall part of one of the oldest settlements in the world?
“We have a very unique situation out here in Rockwall.”
John Lindsey has heard it all before. He’s heard the doubters and skeptics dismiss his work. He’s heard the UFO enthusiasts and treasure hunters begging for validation. He’s met the scientists, geologists, and archaeologists who want to learn more.
Through it all, Lindsey, 64, has kept digging. What he’s found has led him to one conclusion: “We have a very unique situation out here in Rockwall.” Besides being the seat of the fastest-growing county in Texas, Rockwall is also home to one of the great mysteries still remaining in the United States.
An ancient, buried wall underneath the city might just turn the understanding of man’s origins in North America on its ear. If the wall is, as Lindsey believes, more than 12,000 years old, Rockwall would be the site of one of the oldest settlements of technologically advanced humans in world history.
“And that,” Lindsay says, “is where it gets controversial, scary, and all the other exciting elements come into play.”
No one — not scientists, not geologists, not archaeologists — has a definitive answer about the origins of the rock wall. Some believe the three-mile-by-six-mile subterranean structure first discovered by well diggers in the 1800s is the result of natural geological occurrences.
Others, however, think the wall may be the remnant of one of the mythical cities of gold, Quivira, searched for by Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado in the mid-1500s. Lindsey says his evidence points to a mixture of both natural and man-made structures.
While he doesn’t think the wall surrounded a city of gold, he got the idea for the Quivira Project, his 15-year search for an answer, from those legends. Although, looking back on his choice, Lindsey sees that he might have made a mistake with the name.
“I’ll say it’s been distracting,” Lindsay admits. “First of all, when I did it, it was more for fun. I didn’t have any idea of what I was going to run into or that it was going to be as big as it is. I’ve met people that visited Egypt, and people there would ask if they knew about Rockwall or had heard about John Lindsey and the dig out there.
“If I had to do it all over again, I’d select a different name.”
Lindsey, a building designer and amateur geologist, says he is sure part of the wall, maybe even most of it, was naturally formed.
Huge sections of the wall are made of a hard, crystalline structure of metamorphic rock. But there are also areas that are clearly man-made. “For other reasons, a lot of stones seemed to be placed there,” Lindsey notes. “Although they’re made up of the same composition, they’re dating different, and there are doorways, windows, and all these steps going down that have been found in other wells.
“It seems like every time the wall has been dug down there are different features that point to its being man-made,” Lindsey continues. “Well, some of them I believe obviously are; but some of it is nature, which appears to be man-made, but is not. So, it appears to be a combination of the two that we’re getting the data on, which is where I am right now.”
In addition to windows, doors, and steps, Lindsey has found metal rings at the site. There are also carvings that look like maps and writings in an ancient language, but the wall is still a mystery.
So if the structure isn’t entirely natural, and if it isn’t Quivira, what is it? “To me, from all the evidence I’ve seen, it was quite possibly a sea wall,” Lindsey says. Lindsey is now waiting for information
from testing to certify a time frame. A key way of dating the structure is found in the sediments that cover it. Lindsey says he believes the evidence points to massive displacement of the Gulf of Mexico. “When we did our big dig-out in 1999 and 2000 out there, a profile about 40 or 50 feet back of the wall showed huge spikes of blue shale … just under the topsoil, laid up against the wall in big spots as if it had been pushed up there … by a catastrophic event,” Lindsey notes.
This is the clue that makes the whole mystery particularly intriguing. As Lindsey explains, this may mean that man-made portions of the wall were created by people employing technologies and knowledge that, until now, scientists didn’t believe existed at the time Lindsey theorizes that the wall was built.
According to John Lindsey’s research through the Quivira Project, the city’s namesake rock wall may have been built thousands of years ago as a sea wall.
“We know the wall was exposed at one time, [but] when did it get covered up?”
Lindsey says. “We’re already talking of dates back 10,000–12,000 B.C.E., and there are very intelligent goings on here at the wall that weren’t supposed to be happening. “The reason I think it’s a seawall is because going back, even in our own digs, we would find sharks’ teeth embedded in the wall 30 feet down,” Lindsey continues. “That right there tells you that the ocean was there at one time. When we were digging down before we had it covered up, about 36 feet deep we hit underground water.
The evidence of human construction, as well as the wall’s age, is there, too. “Not only have I found steps, big steps that descended from the top, but we began to find sand dollars, and lots of them,” Lindsey says. “The interesting thing about that is, they weren’t petrified. That meant they weren’t millions of years old; they were thousands of years old, which lent to the idea of a cover-up date of about 12,000 years ago.”
The community hasn’t shared Lindsey’s self-described passion for the wall, which he says he can’t quite understand. But that doesn’t mean the mystery of the wall is buried under indifference. “In the scientific world, [word] got around real quick,” Lindsey notes.
Some folks have questioned Lindsey’s intentions in his hunt for answers. He says he’s not trying to turn the wall into a kitschy tourist trap. Indeed, Lindsey’s passion for scientific truth caused him to lose sight of the financial realities of scientific research.
“It came to a point in 2000 when I ran out of money. I mean, I went broke,” Lindsey says. “I gave up my business to keep going. I wasn’t making any money. I mean, I was making a little bit lecturing and so forth, but promises and grants didn’t come through.”
Lindsey’s quest is the opposite of that of long-dead explorers who searched not for answers, but for gold. No matter how much he has uncovered about the wall, there are still more questions.
“[Coronado] was headed this way from Arizona and New Mexico, and at the same time De Soto was crossing the Mississippi headed this way,” Lindsey says. “If the two would have continued their distance of travel, they would have met here in this area. I’m thinking that if they would have continued this way, you have to ask why.”
