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Each month, we’ll throw a dart at a map and write about where it lands.

LOCATION: 6500 Elmstone Dr.

6500 Elmstone Dr.

Boulder Choices

A nature preserve? In Ballantyne? Yep. Don’t take it for granite

WHOEVER NAMED Big Rock Nature Preserve was certainly going for understatement. It’s easy to see it on a map and decide it’s nothing worth visiting. But that would be a huge mistake.

The 22-acre preserve sits in the middle of Ballantyne’s Thornhill neighborhood and is one of Mecklenburg County’s geological marvels. You know you’ve reached it only when you see the county parks sign on Elmstone Drive. Park on the street, walk a short stretch down a wooded dirt path, and behold the house-sized granite boulders that loom before you.

Gnarled trees have grown around and between them, and there’s nothing o -limits to human or animal visitors. Feeling daring? Climb up. Need a new pro le pic? Strike a pensive pose beneath towering granite ledges or hop across the rocks that run through McAlpine Creek, which bisects the property.

There’s archaeological evidence that Native Americans lived there 7,000 years ago. The Charlotte Historic Landmarks Commission has designated the site a historic landmark. Vandals do occasionally gra ti the rocks—a consequence of an unguarded slice of nature within city limits.

But the stains are easy to overlook if you focus on the sheer size and shape of the boulders and the feeling of connection they give you, to nature and to history. —Cristina Bolling