US.XI.
This is the Licking River in Licking county Ohio. People used to ask me a lot why my license plate on my car said Licking. It is because that is the name of the county in Ohio I am from. It is called that because of the natural salt licks present in that region. What is a salt lick they would ask. A place where minerals are on the surface of the earth and animals come to lick them to obtain those minerals I would explain. Well this is the Licking river and this is where it goes through Black Hand Gorge. That was named so because of a petroglyph that existed there, I am told, until the building of the Ohio and Erie Canal systems in the late 1820s. One legend has it that their were two suitors of a woman and the loser cut his hand off in shame and threw it down one of the cliffs making the black hand mark. The other is that there was a black hand that pointed the way to indian tribes headed towards the flint deposits a couple of miles south. Legends.
Black Hand Gorge. Licking River. Ohio. USA. Summer. 2010.