STONE MOUNTAINThe story behind Georgia’s most famous landmark

TEXT, LAYOUT, and SELECT PHOTOGRAPHYby LIAM GREENAMYRE

tone Mountain is the landmark that most defines our state. This

enormous, dome-shaped rock has been shaped both by the natural forces of the planet and an overwhelming effort by men, and it is often called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Its Confederate Memorial is the largest sculpted work of art on Earth, and the mountain draws more visitors than any other American attraction other than Disney World. But Stone Mountain is much more than a destination for tourists. It is a crucial reminder of the South’s history; the glory, the valiant struggle against insurmountable odds, but also the bigotry and disgrace that Southerners must work to overcome even today. Since the beginning, there have been more than a few legends surrounding Stone Mountain. But its true story is bigger than the mountain alone—it is the story of the South.

he mountain was formed millions of years ago, miles beneath the

Earth’s surface. Unlike most mountains, which are created by the shifting of tectonic plates, Stone Mountain was formed by immense pressure and unimaginable temperatures deep underground, and was only exposed as the surrounding landscape gradually eroded. From its peak, one has a breathtaking view of Georgia. On a clear day, you can see more than thirty miles in every direction.

For millennia, the mountain was known only to the Creek and Cherokee peoples native to Georgia. Even they marveled at the mountain and its seemingly mystical origin. In the sixteenth century, when Spanish explorers became the first Europeans to glimpse

Stone Mountain, they were amazed at this high, bare mountain, “shining when the sun set like a fire.” Yet their amazement only grew as they explored the mountain. At its peak lay an enormous flat stone with two enormous cracks crossing at right angles in the center. Yet this stone, later to be called ‘Crossroads,’ was

“Even more mysterious was an ancient wall surrounding the entire peak of the mountain. Not even the Native Ameri-

cans knew its origin.”

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Rock formations near the mountain’s peak

not all the explorers found.Even more mysterious was an ancient

wall surrounding the entire peak of the mountain. Not even the Native Americans knew its origin, only that it was there when they first came to the area. The wall was of loose, fragmentary stone and the only place of entrance was a natural doorway under a large rock, so low that one could only enter by crawling on hands and knees. Theories abound as to the nature of the wall, but it is now believed that it was used by ancient tribes to set off an area of the highest religious and ceremonial importance.

Both of these wonders have now been destroyed by quarrying and a constant stream of visitors, and a crucial part of the mountain’s ancient history has been lost.

y the dawn of the nineteenth century, Stone

Mountain was already Georgia’s most popular tourist attraction. Stagecoach lines travelled to the area from all parts of the state, and the mountain had become a popular location for young men

to bring their dates on horseback. State fairs were held on the mountain in the middle of the century, and a tower was erected at its peak. Cloud’s Tower, as it was known, reached 165 feet into the sky, and visitors could enjoy drinking and dancing in a small club at the top. The tower’s base, however, was not secured to the mountain, and it soon succumbed to the elements.

In 1839, a railroad was completed, travelling at the unprecedented speed of twelve miles per hour. This newfound ease of transportation opened the door for the mountain to be quarried, and prospectors and b u s i n e s s m e n soon found Stone Mountain to be quite

Legend holds that a man from Athens acquired a portion of the mountain and made the trek to his newly gained prop-erty on foot. Upon seeing the barren rock and rough terrain, he promptly traded it for a mule and a pair of shoes to get home

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Quarrymen work to extract Stone Mountain’s valuable granite.

profitable. Granite from Stone Mountain was shipped across the globe and used in the Panama Canal and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, as well as some of the nation’s most important government buildings—the United States Capitol, four Federal Reserve Banks including the one in Atlanta, the Treasury Building, Fort Knox, as well as numerous buildings across Georgia.

Ownership of property around and including Stone Mountain was apportioned with a statewide land lottery. Seven lots with seven different owners included pieces of the mountain. Legend holds that a man from Athens acquired a portion of the mountain and made the trek to his newly gained property on foot. Upon seeing the barren rock and rough terrain, he promptly traded it for a mule and a pair of shoes to get home.

y the beginning

of 1861, the nation was teetering on the brink of war. South Carolina had declared its secession, and the other Southern states were solemnly deciding whether to follow in their stead. On January 18th, a statewide meeting was held, with representatives from each county in attendance. Dekalb’s representative, Stone Mountain native George K. Smith, voted twice against leaving the Union. But the vote went in favor of secession by 166 to 130, and the state pulled together in preparation for war.

Stone Mountain’s most intense involvement in the war came in the summer of 1864, as General Sherman’s Union

forces attempted to isolate Atlanta by severing the rail lines surrounding the city. A number of battles and skirmishes took place around the mountain as Union troops advanced towards Atlanta, and hundreds of wounded men were brought to Stone Mountain to receive treatment. Despite the efforts

“Dekalb’s representative voted twice against leaving the Union. But the vote went in favor of secession [...] the state

pulled together in preparation for war.”

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Left: Even on a hazy, day the skyline of Atlanta can be seen from the peak.Right: The American flag hangs above old Confederate flags.

and sacrifices of men throughout the South, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House. Confederate forces across the South lay down their arms as the news reached them.

t was after the Civil War that the Venable family began its deep

involvement with Stone Mountain. William Hoyt Venable and Samuel Hoyt Venable were the eldest of eight children, and had grown up during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The suffering their once-prosperous family had endured was still fresh in their minds. After a series of failed business ventures and bad investments, Samuel and William formed the Venable Brothers Contractors. The two bought a small granite ledge near Lithonia, but encountered cash flow problems and were unable to pay their workers until the granite was prepared for quarrying.

According to legend, Samuel invited the quarrymen over for beer and to discuss the matter. He made them a strange proposition; he would wrestle the quarrymen, one at a time, and for each man who beat him, he would pay them full wages of six dollars a day.

Every man that Samuel threw down would have to remain at his house for a week without

wages. Samuel had a tall, thin build, but this belied his true strength. He threw down nine of the men, rested for ten minutes, then threw down ten more. The rest refused to wrestle, and quarrying began three days later with full wages.

In just a year, the Venables found success and were able to expand, buying additional properties at Pine Mountain and Arabia Mountain. Six years later, they made their biggest purchase, going into partnership with two others to buy Stone Mountain. They quickly bought out their partners’

“[The Venables] has grown up during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The suf-fering their once-prosperous family had endured was still fresh in their minds.”

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Right: Gutzon Borglum and crewman repel down the side of the mountain.

Below: Oxen were used to transport the granite down the mountainside.

stakes and found t h e m s e l v e s to be the sole p r o p r i e t o r s of Georgia’s most known landmark. Soon the Venables were producing 200,000 paving blocks per day, used in city streets across the country.

he idea for a memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers arose around

1914, first appearing in editorials in several Atlanta magazines and newspapers. The Union had spent large sums of money erecting memorials for their heroes, yet Southerners felt that their historical perspective had been neglected.

The idea, however, did not fully take shape until the involvement of Helen Plane. Made a widow by the Battle of Sharpsburg, Plane was a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group dedicated to honoring the memory of Confederate soldiers. She formed the Stone Mountain Monument Association and began to gather support. The Venable family deeded the north face of the mountain to the UDC to build the monument, and a family history

later declared that, “the people of Atlanta knew that the Venable Brothers, always in the forefront of those who worked to better and to build their city and state, would not only give the scarp of the mountain freely, but would further the cause with all possible aid. [The sculpture would serve as a] historic document, chronicling the story of a people who gave their all to defend the Constitution which their forefathers had bought with their life’s blood.” Gutzon Borglum was selected as the architect of the monument after Mrs. Plane saw a bust of Lincoln he had created.

Yet the Confederate Memorial also received enthusiastic support from another, more sinister source. In 1915, the release of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” spurred riots in cities across the country. The film, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as the heroic saviors of the South, also created the impetus for the rebirth of the group, which had fallen silent in the 1870s.

On November 25, 1915, the reincarnation

“On November 25, 1915, the reincarnation of the Ku Klux Klan took place at the

peak of Stone Mountain.”

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Right: A shady grove on the trail up the mountainAbove: A poster for D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”

of the Ku Klux Klan took place at the peak of Stone Mountain. Lead by William J. Simmon, fifteen men gathered in the cold and arranged a base of stones, a cross of pine boards, an American flag, an open Bible, and an unsheathed sword. Nathan Bedford Forrest II administered an oath as Simmons touched a match to the Kerosene-soaked cross. Among the men gathered there that night was the owner of the mountain himself, Samuel H. Venable.

Helen Plane wrote that “The ‘Birth of a Nation’ will give us a percentage to the next Monday’s matinee. Since seeing this wonderful and beautiful picture of Reconstruction in the South, I feel that it is due to the Ku Klux Klan which saved us from Negro domination and carpet-bag rule,

that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?” Borglum included a KKK altar in his original design for the memorial, and later joined the Klan and participated actively at the highest levels. Stone Mountain would go on to be the site of Klan rallies even into the 1980s.

ork on the monument began in earnest, but the techniques for

creating a sculpture so large had not yet been developed. Borglum had to invent a number of tactics and devices to move forwards, including an enormous projector to display the design on the face of the

“‘Just as the South cannot afford to dis-criminate against any of its own people, the rest of the nation cannot afford to discriminate against the South [...] We

have paid to great a price for being one nation to let ourselves now come apart at

the seams.”’

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Left: A master sculptor works on Rober E. Lee’s headAbove: Work platforms suspended from the face of the mountain.

mountain. Work stalled with the outbreak of World War I, and did not resume until 1922. When crews returned to the mountain, however, Borglum began to fall out with the Monument Association. Borglum had a domineering, perfectionist personality, and the Association soon voted him out, citing charges of “neglect and virtual abandonment [of the carving], inordinate demands for money not due him, offensive egotism, and delusions of grandeur.” In a rage, Borglum destroyed the models he had created for the sculpture.

Another sculptor, Augustus Lukeman, was selected, and although Borglum had completed an enormous figure of Robert E. Lee’s head, nothing of his work remains on the mountain today. In contrast to Borglum’s naturalistic representations, “Lukeman’s figures were posed in stylized heroic stance

and lined up in a frieze. His rationale was that the Civil War was the last traditional war, before armies began firing poison gas at one another from trenches miles apart, and the subjects should be treated in a classic fashion.”

Yet even with a new sculptor, the project ground

to a halt with the advent of the Great Depression. It would be more than three decades before work began again in 1962, in the throes of the South’s massive resistance to racial integration. The idea arose for the state to assume control of the mountain and to complete the monument. Governor Marvin Griffin advocated that the land “be purchased immediately for public use, and that, if necessary, the right of eminent domain be exercised.”

Georgia House Bill 946 was passed, authorizing $1.5 million for the purchase of the land as well as granting the authority, if the land was not available for sale, to acquire it by condemnation. The bill also authorized a bond issue to pay for construction of the memorial and Stone Mountain Park. Throughout the renewed construction, the final form of the monument remained

The completed monument

unresolved. One of the more outlandish schemes was to create a hundred-foot high statue of Christ, which would rotate to always face the sun. A more sensible solution set forth was to let the monument remain unfinished as a symbol of the unfulfilled ambitions of the Confederacy.

After a final design was agreed upon, the carving was completed in the spring of 1970, and dedication ceremony took place on May 9th. The reverend Billy Graham and President Richard Nixon were originally slated to appear, but they had to back out due to illness and the war in Southeast Asia, respectively. Controversy arose when Reverend William Holmes Borders, pastor of the black Wheat Street Baptist Church,

was selected to replace Graham. James R. Venable, then Imperial Wizard of the Klan, boycotted the ceremonies.

Spiro Agnew, despite being embroiled in controversies of his own, delivered a speech emphasizing reconciliation and rejecting the South’s historic prejudices. “Just as the South cannot afford to discriminate against any of its own people, the rest of the nation cannot afford to discriminate against the South…We have paid too great a price for being one nation to let ourselves now come apart at the seams.” With those words, the memorial was finally unveiled and Stone Mountain would go on to become a potent symbol, for better and for worse, of the story of the South.

Visitors center and sky lift at the peak of the mountain.