Each spring during the 1920s and 1930s, the quiet valley around Promise Rock became a center of sheep shearing, with a network of corrals holding sheep bound for shearing pens where men hand-sheared tens of thousands of animals, and children from Henrieville walked two miles to watch and later returned during school holidays to play and picnic there. Before Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, public lands had no limits on livestock grazing, and tens of thousands of cattle, sheep, and angora goats depleted local rangelands until the act authorized grazing management and improved conditions. Local lore says Promise Rock got its name when a young man, picnicking there with his companion, asked her to marry him and jokingly threatened to push her over the edge if she refused, after which she agreed.