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The Rock House
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Kelly Moore mentioned to a friend that she was hoping for “something unique” when she was looking for a home. Her friend knew just the house.
The first time Moore drove past the Rock House in Elko, Ga., she fell in love with it. It was unlike anything she had seen before. The two-story craftsman farmhouse has a generous front porch that faces the street and is surrounded by pastures on the left and right. There is no other home nearby.
The most unique thing about the home is that it is built from rock indigenous to the soil.
“We find it all the time when we have a reason to dig around in the ground,” Moore says.
The rock has fossils and imprints of seashells in it, hinting that the property was a coastal area at one time. The walls are built 18 inches thick.
When she first heard about the house, Moore and her sons would drive past the home in the evenings, looking at how cozy it looked with all of the warm lights. After three months of courting the previous owner, Moore and her sons were allowed to see the home.
The boys disappeared into the land behind the home. They noticed the majestic trees and the wildlife. They even found a spot in the woods where they could see Perry. At the time, they didn’t know that the home is on the second highest point in the county. The boys ran back to the house to share how special the property was but didn’t want to spoil the negotiations. Kelly Moore bought the house that day.
Moore became dear friends with the previous owner and later her daughter got married in the front yard.
“You never feel like it’s yours. You’re just here for a time,” Moore says of the old home. She remembers a 98-year-old woman that came by to show her two daughters the home she had spent time in as a child. The daughters had heard about it their whole lives but were even suspicious that it existed.
Moore was used to older homes and the charm that comes with settled floors and door frames a little off-center. She was told the home was built in 1918 but she suspects it was finished two years later. When her son had to do some work on the roof, he found the initials of the builder and the date 1920.
The home sits on 13 acres but is surrounded by 1500 acres protected by a conservation easement because of a rare flower.
The inside of the home almost feels like a British hunting lodge, with lots of leather and deep green, antlers, feathers, and hardwood floors. “I feel like everything that I use is because I’m a boy mom, and you just become accustomed to making the antlers work,” Moore laughs.
The home has two big bedrooms upstairs. “When we looked at the house, they had multiple children living together and we liked that,” Moore said. She renovated the bathroom and uses a room downstairs as an extra bedroom.
Moore’s family loves the land around the house and its history. “It’s quiet out here,” Moore says. “We like to search through the woods and think about the folks that lived here before us and what they might be doing.”
They look for evidence of an old spring house, or the rumored civil war fort. They might find things from when the property was a dairy up until the 1930s.
“It’s strong, and it’s cozy, she says of the Rock House, and today it’s her favorite place to gather with family.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with The Macon Newsroom.
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