HUNTINGTON, WV (WSAZ)--Historians say if you look in the very first issue of Smithsonian Magazine, you will find an article on the Indian Head Rock. Going on two centuries later, the two state fight over the big river rock, which is now on dry land, takes a new twist tomorrow.

That’s when a Kentucky lawyer begins presenting his theft case against an Ohio recovery team.

Mary Webb is one of many in Portsmouth who remembers her grandparents telling stories of a popular Ohio tourist attraction around the year 1900 that would rise up when the river was low.

“They would carve their initials,” Webb said.

Those old stories inspired Ohioan Steve Shaffer to form a recovery team and haul up the eight ton rock, all to make a dream come true.

“I heard about it as a sixth grader in a man’s book,” Shaffer said.

Susan Fields is with the Army Corps of Engineers and says the Ohio recovery team took the rock from Kentucky waters without state or federal permission, violating a federal law from 1899.

“The rock was moved without proper authority under the Rivers and Harbors Act,” Fields said.

“I had no idea,” Shaffer said. “It’s just a rock with graffiti.”

Kentucky Commonwealth Attorney Cliff Duvall is preparing state criminal charges regarding what he says was a registered Kentucky state artifact illegally removal. He says Shaffer violated Kentucky’s Antiquity Act, a felony with penalties from one to five years in prison. Duvall would not talk on camera but did send an email stating he would enforce the law.

“I heard I might go to prison,” Shaffer said.

And what do average Joe’s and Jane’s from Ohio say about this rock and a hard place predicament?

Tangled, cross state legal wrangling will keep Portsmouth Mayor Jim Kalb from testifying before the grand jury Friday. But Duvall will still begin presenting his case against the alleged rock thieves.