He found the view from the rock impressive and wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia: The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature.

On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent.

The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disruptions and avulsions from their beds by the most powerful agents in nature, corroborate the impression.

For the mountains being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in that plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around to pass through the breach and participate in the calm below.

Because this natural foundation had "dwindled to very unsafe dimensions by the action of the weather, and still more, by the devastations of tourists and curiosity-hunters,"[5] four stone pillars were placed under each corner of the uppermost slab sometime between 1855 and 1860.