The party arrived opposite the "big rock."

The evidence

• “No place they had seen had so appealed to them as this, and the combination of forest and prairie, with the spring creeks and the river, the untouched forest trees in the oak openings, and the countless wild floAvers of every shade and hue on the prairie, must indeed have been an alluring sight. Their minds were made up to look no farther, but that this point should be their future home ; so they started back for Milwaukee to get their families on July 20, 1835. They were delayed in returning until November 15, but on that day John Inman, George Follner, William Holmes, Jr., and Joshua Holmes left Milwaukee to reside permanently at this place ; they arrived opposite the big rock at Monterey, where the Indian ford was, on November 18, 1835, and proceeded to build a cabin at that place. This log cabin was the first house built within the limits of the city of Janesville, and stood about where the new Janesville & Southeastern railway passes before it crosses Eastern avenue, about thirty rods east of the Monterey bridge.”

  1908-brown-rock-county/26-history-of-janesville.md, Vol. 2, PDF p. 11 / book p. 526

  Brown, William Fiske, editor. Rock County, Wisconsin: A New History of Its Cities, Villages, Towns, Citizens and Varied Interests, from the Earliest Times, Up to Date. Chicago: C. F. Cooper & Co., 1908. 2 vols. archive.org/details/rockcountywiscon01brow, archive.org/details/rockcountywiscon02brow.

  Grade A: Found on a page of one of our sources