Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. It is an important symbol in American history. There are no contemporaneous references to the Pilgrims’ landing on a rock at Plymouth, and it is not referred to in Edward Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation (1620–21) or in Bradford’s journal Of Plymouth Plantation (1620–47). The first known written reference to the rock’s existence is in 1715, when it is described in the town boundary records as “a great rock.” The first written reference to Pilgrims landing on a rock is found 121 years after they landed, in 1741. A rock traditionally identified as Plymouth Rock, weighing an estimated in its original form, has long been memorialized on the shore of Plymouth Harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts.History of Plymouth RockPlymouth Rock — geologically classified as a Dedham granodiorite boulder and a glacial erratic — had lain at the foot of Cole’s Hill from generation to generation until the century after the Pilgrims’ landing in 1620. When plans were afoot to build a wharf at the Pilgrims’ landing site in 1741, a 94-year-old elder of the church named Thomas Faunce, then living three miles from the spot, declared that he knew the precise boulder on which the Mayflower pilgrims first stepped when disembarking. As recounted in the 1897 book, The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, the standard story goes: