Talk:Giant Rock

Miscellany left on the talk page

the end is comming! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.216.196.1 (talk • contribs) 19:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

habahabahabahabahaabbaa........................................... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.56.17.118 (talk) 18:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It's the ultimate test of notability. :D Why is Giant Rock notable? Well, for one, it's giant... 24.182.6.249 (talk) 18:23, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:OR statement by Phil Smith

I removed this piece of text by Philsmithaz from the article as it appears to be an oral tradition rather than writing, but perhaps someone can find more info on Frank Critzer to confirm this: Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:29, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Additional note: USAF veteran, Harold Dierdorf, Phoenix, AZ related that he met Frank Critzer, who lived under Giant Rock in a carved-out room under the rock. Harold was a teenager about 1941-42 and the German immigrant invited him in to see the inside of his room beneath the rock, in which the ceiling was the bottom side of Giant Rock. Harold saw a tunnel running out the other side of the room, which Mr Critzer explained was for cross ventilation and stretched clear to the other side of the rock. Harold thinks he is the only other person to see the inside of the room. Some months later the military detected radio signals coming from the rock and went to investigate. When Mr Critzer realized the US government was onto him, he detonated a large cache of dynamite which Harold felt several miles away. Turns out Mr Critzer was a German spy and was sending signals to his contact, according to Harold. The blast was so huge, it totally obliterated Frank Critzer and Harold knows that blast in 1942 was the cause of the rock to split in 2000. Harold has related this story to the San Bernardino County authorities and told me this story in December, 2015. Harold joined the US Air Force in 1942 and trained glider pilots from his base in Southern California, which was near the farm where he was raised.

- Phil Smith, Sun City, AZ

@Graeme Bartlett: https://obscurantist.com/oma/critzer-frank/ sources to an undated issue of The Last Prom and has a different version of what occurred.

Frank Critzer apparently was a miner among other things^[1] which explains how he was able to construct the room under the rock. That web page also mentions a similar story of Critzer's demise as what's in The Last Prom.

[2] has a beautiful picture of the flake when it was fresh. --Marc Kupper|talk 03:57, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

One more, [3], which has far more detail. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:22, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Weight

25,000 ton according to http://www.giantrockproject.com/ Keith McClary (talk) 01:09, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Geologic history of Giant Rock

It would need sourcing but it would be nice if the article included a geologic history of Giant Rock. It appears to have rolled down from the adjacent Spy Mountain. While comments on some web sites claim it's a dropstone or a glacial erratic such as Big Rock in Canada it seems unlikely that Giant Rock would still be resting on the surface given how geologically active that part of the Mohave desert is.

PDF page 34 of http://www.desertsymposium.org/DS_1992-2_Old%20Routes%20to%20the%20Colorado.pdf is about the "Quaternary Geology of the Spy Mountain Region, Landers Quadrangle, San Bernardino County, California" and describes Homestead Mountain, separated from Spy Mountain by the Pipes Wash fault, as "The fan deposits are composed from sand and gravel derived from gneisses and granitoid rocks that make up Homestead Mountain." Page 37 "Homestead Mountain and Spy Mountain are two northwest-trending remnants of Precambrian basement and Mesozoic plutonism that may have been connected at one time." This, while the two mountains appear similar when viewed in Google maps it's possible that the comments about the composition of Homestead Mountain do not apply to Spy Mountain.

There has been earthquake activity on the Homestead Mountain side resulting in a far closer examination of that side by geologists.

While Giant Rock is marked on the map on page 34 I did not see any mention of it in the text of this paper. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:38, 7 February 2020 (UTC)