Wenatchee Rock Formation May Be Ancient `Calendar'

WENATCHEE - When the vernal-equinox sun rose at 6:05 a.m. recently, Miguel Mora stood atop Saddlerock looking at what might have been an ancient solar observatory.

Mora, known as Dr. Equinox in his native Mexico, says the monolithic sandstone spires that stand above the Cannon Mine in Central Washington could have been used by early man to mark time.

March 21, the first full day of spring, was the vernal equinox. The sun crossed the equator into the Northern Hemisphere and day was as long as night.

Mora believes the day would have been very important to Native American tribes living on the eastern slope of the Cascades because spring meant better hunting and an increase in natural crops.

Several times a year, Mora climbs to the top of Saddlerock to try to uncover the history of a people who may have chiseled stone and moved giant rocks for use as a primitive calendar.

"People around here thought he was crazy at first," says Mel Wattula, security manager for Asamera Minerals Inc., owner of the Cannon Mine and the Saddlerock property. Mora eventually persuaded Wattula to climb to the top of the rock for the summer solstice last June 21.

"There's something that's been done to alter the rocks and make a phenomenon happen," says Wattula. "Stones have been placed in specific places. There's nothing to dispute that."

Asamera geologists agree some of Saddlerock's horns may have been sharpened by ancient man to better define their shape.

Wattula notes that the north inner horn of the saddle appears to have been chipped, or cracked by water.

Gil Bullock, a Wenatchee Valley College astronomy and earth-science teacher, scheduled a night campout with students to look for star alignments that would be useful in measuring time.

"I'm a little more cautious than Miguel," Bullock says of the solar-observatory theory. "But there are some very definite possibilities. We'll be looking for some kind of pattern to substantiate it."

Mora, a Wenatchee resident since 1968, photographed the shadows made by Saddlerock's unique profile on the hillside.

He calls it a "projection screen." Shadows made by the rock's peaks, he says, may be marked by stones set as reference points by ancient man.

Mora, 54, is self-taught. He came to the attention of archaeologists when he steered them to a major solar observatory near Guadalajara, Mexico.

Mora hopes archaeologists will become as intrigued with Saddlerock as he is and search for evidence of an observatory where prehistoric people held rituals for important celestial events.