Rockwall, Texas was named for a mysterious rock wall. What makes the wall so mysterious is that no one knows who built it. The wall is surrounded in controversy as archeologists and geologists choose sides.

While many of the geologists who have examined and studied the wall claim it’s a natural phenomenon, they can’t explain scientifically how such a wall could have formed naturally.

At one time, part of the wall that reportedly had an arched doorway or window was a tourist attraction. The family charged a quarter to view their portion of the wall that they’d unearthed. There were reported outcroppings of the wall. In cases, the exposed wall portions were two to three feet high.

The wall was first discovered in the mid-1850s, when RF Canup was digging a well. Eight feet down, he struck a wall and eventually dug out nearly 100 feet of it. He and most townspeople believed the wall was the ruins of an ancient structure. (1)

In 2012, there was a renewed interest in restoring the mysterious rock wall and bringing it into a new realm of tourist destination, but even that plan was controversial and quickly died.









What’s Known about the Wall

–> First discovered during the 1850s when a landowner was digging a well.

–> The wall is 3.5 miles wide and 5.6 miles long.

–> It covers 20 square miles.

–> The rocks are feldspar granite, not a natural find for that area.

Anomalies in the Wall

Two metal rings or spheres 6” and 10” in diameter are embedded in the stones. They are made out of tin, titanium and iron. Who made these rings? What purpose did they serve?

There are various excavation accounts retold by the town’s founding families of “cubicles or rooms constructed of stone which you could walk through and would reach a corridor which seemed to run in a direction into the hill that the town square sits above”. (1)

Stories of a hidden room filled with gold inspired several men to undertake secret excavations. During one such incident, two men claimed to have unearthed a corridor with a Gothic arched ceiling. Fear of structure instability and possible collapse chased them away.

Another description told how the outside wall went straight down, but inside, the wall descended 40 feet in an inward curve that was much thicker than the exterior wall. (1)

Giant Hoax or Fact?

In 1886, an article ran in the Rockwall Success newspaper that a man, Ben Burton, had discovered not just human artifacts but the skull of a giant, reported to be the size of a half bushel basket. The writer conjectured that the giant would have weighed 1,000 pounds.

The three men who’d descended into a rock cavity also discovered a “60’ x 100’ chamber” with a ceiling height of 40 feet. They recounted how the slate ceiling was held up by polished black marble pillars. The men claimed that an eerie voice yelled for them to get out and a bird or bat flew at them. The last part of the story is what many feel is a tongue-in-cheek attempt to let the reader know the story is made up.

There’s no skull or any other artifact to back up this particular story, so it remains unknown if the newspaper account was a spoof or a factual report since the author invited readers to come to his office to view the skull. (2)