A massive spherical sandstone concretion on the Great Plains is documented in this stereoview, the photographer unmarked, dating to the 1860s or 1870s. A man in a vest and work clothes stands at the base of the formation to provide scale, a compositional device used deliberately by survey and geological photographers of the period to convey the extraordinary size of natural features encountered on the frontier. The albumen prints are mounted on a standard stereoview card.

The concretion is a near-perfect sphere easily ten to fifteen feet in diameter, its surface showing the characteristic horizontal banding and radial cracking of large cemented sandstone formations, with the layered striations wrapping concentrically around the entire visible surface. Sparse prairie grass and low scrub surround the base of the rock, and additional smaller rock outcroppings are visible at left. The open sky fills the upper portion of both views.

Spherical sandstone concretions of this scale were a well-documented subject of frontier survey photography in the 1860s and 1870s, appearing frequently in series produced along the Smoky Hill River valley of Kansas and in similar Great Plains locations where erosion exposed these formations on the open prairie. Their dramatic appearance made them popular stereoview subjects, valued both as geological curiosities and as evidence of the remarkable landscape encountered by westward expansion.