Rocky Side Park (Rockport, Indiana)

Rocky Side Park is a popular access point to Rockport’s namesake bluff along the Ohio River’s edge. The small caves on the cliff face spawn many tales of river pirates, and an early settler family actually lived in one of the caves for a time.

Moving south along the bluff’s top is the Mathias Sharp House—a well-preserved Italianate mansion on the National Register of Historic Places. One block further, the Lincoln Landing Monument standing at the end of Clark Street commemorates Abraham Lincoln’s first flatboat trip to New Orleans.

At the end of October 1803, the Lewis and Clark Expedition passed by. Contemporaneous traveler Thomas Rodney wrote about The Bluffs:

A[t] the point on the NW shore where this bar ends there is a small remarkable rocky mountain in the midst of the plain country. A large round stone part of the mountain has been broke off by its own weight by the rock below dissolving or moultering away, and in its fall has made a great road in the side of the rock that the mountain is composed of, which is to be seen 8 or ten miles before you git to it. The lump of rock aforesaid that rolld down persued it course to the verge of the river where it stoped and appears as you approach it like a haystack.
—Thomas Rodney (October 24, 1803)

https://ohioriverparksproject.com/the-parks/rocky-side-park/