Qualla: Leo Petroglyph

Leo Petroglyph: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Nobody knows what they mean. The 37 images carved into the sandstone slab at Leo - human figures, animals, footprints belonging to each - were made by Fort Ancient people sometime between AD 1000 and 1650, and the artists left no key. There are no accompanying inscriptions, no surviving oral tradition that maps directly onto these specific marks. Archaeologists can read style and date, but they cannot read intent. The figures stand on the stone in silence, a message addressed to someone the carvers expected to understand.

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Leo Petroglyph: Carvings on the Bluff

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bwheelerrtrm, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Leo Petroglyph sits at the edge of an unglaciated sandstone cliff in Jackson County, the same southerly extension of weathering-resistant Mississippian-period rock that produces the Hocking Hills and Lake Katharine. The carving slab is shallowly horizontal, the kind of broad ...

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Image: Bwheelerrtrm | CC BY-SA 3.0

Leo Petroglyph: Who the Fort Ancient Were

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The Fort Ancient culture occupied southern Ohio, eastern Indiana, northern Kentucky, and western West Virginia from around AD 1000 until the 1600s. They were settled maize-bean-squash farmers who lived in palisaded villages along major river valleys, used pottery tempered with cr...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Leo Petroglyph: What the WPA Built

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The Works Progress Administration, the Depression-era federal program that put millions of unemployed Americans to work on public projects, built a wooden shelter over the petroglyph slab during the 1930s. The shelter is itself now a piece of New Deal history, joining the carving...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Leo Petroglyph: Protected and Pondered

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bwheelerrtrm, CC BY-SA 3.0. On November 10, 1970, the Leo Petroglyph was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Ohio History Connection maintains the site, which is open to the public free of charge year-round. Visitors walk a short trail through the woods to reach the shelter, where the sla...

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Image: Bwheelerrtrm | CC BY-SA 3.0