File:Walt Whitman Inscription on Mazinaw Rock - Bon Echo (21173474953).jpg

The following information on Old Walt was obtained from 'The Mazinaw Experience' by John Campbell.

Upon Merrill Denison's return from the war in 1919, he learned of his mother's (Flora MacDonald Denison) plans for the inscription honouring Whitman. Originally Flora wanted a bust of Walt Whitman carved into the Rock similar to Mount Rushmore but the idea proved to be too costly. Being an architect by training, he readily agreed to complete the working drawings. The passage on the rock was taken from Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' in the book - Leaves of Grass.

At the re-dedication of the Old Walt inscription on June 29, 1965, Merrill said of his mother that" "She saw in the qualities of the Big Rock-elemental, seemingly ageless, so little affected by the passage of the centuries - the self-same qualities she found in Whitman: the poet and the man."

The task of making the inscription was not easy. A local miner, Sol Cummings, drilled 3 holes in the Rock high above the water's surface and inserted 3 iron pins with eyes at the end - this was completed in the winter using a ladder on the frozen lake. The next summer a scaffold was built suspended by the pins.