Underwater Roads

Natural or Artificial?
The sight was so amazing that for a moment I could scarcely believe my eyes. Was this a dream? For in all my previous explorations I had never encountered anything like this before. Loose rocks, sand, or logs predictably make up the normal substrate of northern Wisconsin waterways but never anything that looked like an old fashioned paved street!

Luckily, I still had some battery life left so getting photos was the first thing on my mind. For the next few minutes I occupied myself with photographing this unusual site to obtain the best possible proof of its existence, remembering always that the bane of such unusual discoveries like this are their often obviously faked nature or lack of hard evidence. As you can see from the actual photographs here, the underwater "structure" (for lack of a better word) appears to be made from carefully shaped and precisely fitted flat stones and does not appear to be recent in age or otherwise faked. But is this curious underwater site of natural or artificial origin?

As mentioned, the site is totally out of character from the normal jumble of rounded glacial boulders found in area rivers and lakebeds. And while I do not conclude nor wish to suggest that this site was constructed by human agency and I tend to believe that there is probably a natural explanation for it, never-the-less there is a distinctly artificial appearance to the point where smaller pieces of "worked" stone have been carefully fitted into gaps between larger stones.

Furthermore, the waterworn edges of the structure seem to suggest great age and a long period of underwater erosion, although the precise age of the site is impossile to guess. In places the stones are slightly out of position, but again this is probably due to current action as the site appeared to be untouched by visitors of any type except for the cold-blooded finny variety. Nor was there any sign of modern tools or other artifacts that might rationally explain the origin of this unusual locale. That this underwater "structure" or "road" has gone undetected until my discovery of it, however, is not surprising. The waterway in which it lies is well off the beaten track and the site itself is obscured by luxuriant aquatic vegetation and slightly turbid water. These things would tend to conceal it from any casual surface visitor that may pass by.