How Rainbow Rocks Got its Name - Farm & Wilderness

For many years during meeting for worship at TL, I had concentrated on a large outcropping of rock on the hill opposite the meeting area. I knew it wasn’t Mad Morgan’s Potato Patch but it looked like it might have a pretty good view of camp. So one day in 1971, I offered an afternoon activity of attempting to go up there and find the rock and see if it had a view. One boy signed up.

After rest hour we started bushwhacking up the mountain across the road from the dam. We bushwhacked all over the place and I began to doubt that we would ever find the rock. I could see thunderheads moving in and I had a feeling we were going to get drenched. All of a sudden, I saw an open space where trees should have been and we made our way over to it. It was the rock I had been looking for. It did have a beautiful view of the camp at that time.

All of a sudden, we heard thunder and rain poured down hard. So we crept under the branches of a tree. The rain lasted only two or three minutes, but we were soaked. Then the clouds blew out as fast as they had come in. Looking down at the lake we saw a beautiful rainbow seeming to touch the water and stretching way up into the sky. I had my camera with me hoping we would find this view. I took a picture of the rainbow. Later when we returned to camp and reported our find, someone suggested we call it Rainbow Rocks, so it wouldn’t be confused with Mad Morgan’s Potato Patch. The name stuck.

A while later, one fall and spring, Dave Martin (Staff ’68-’97, TL Director ’83-’93) laid out a trail that went from Shrewsbury Shelter past Rainbow Rocks to camp. He laid several miles of string to mark the route. That summer the Senior Lodge built the trail and blazed it so it could be found again without bushwhacking to it as we did. We called the trail the Georgia Connection, because it connected the camps to the Appalachian Trail, which ends in Georgia.