Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock and the site of Stone Mountain Park, east of Atlanta, Georgia. Outside the park is the city of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The park is the most visited tourist site in the state of Georgia.
Stone Mountain, once owned by the Venable Brothers, was purchased by the state of Georgia in 1958 "as a memorial to the Confederacy." Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination, although recreational use of the park had been ongoing for several years prior. The park today is owned by the state of Georgia.
The mountain, which ranges in composition from quartz monzonite to granite and granodiorite, is more than in circumference at its base. The summit of the mountain can be reached by a walk-up trail on the west side of the mountain or by the Skyride aerial tram.
At its summit, the elevation is above sea level and above the surrounding area. Stone Mountain is well known for not only its geology, but also the enormous rock relief on its north face, the largest bas-relief artwork in the world. The carving, completed in 1972, depicts three Confederate leaders, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.
Geology
Stone Mountain is a pluton, a type of igneous intrusion. Primarily composed of quartz monzonite, the dome of Stone Mountain was formed during the formation of the Blue Ridge Mountains around 300–350 million years ago, part of the Appalachian Mountains. It formed as a result of the upwelling of magma from within the Earth's crust. This magma solidified to form granite within the crust below the surface.The Stone Mountain pluton continues underground at its longest point into Gwinnett County. Numerous reference books and Georgia literature have dubbed Stone Mountain as "the largest exposed piece of granite in the world". This misconception is most likely a result of misrepresentation by granite companies and early park administration. Stone Mountain, though often called a pink granite dome, actually ranges in composition from quartz monzonite to granite and granodiorite.
The minerals within the rock include quartz, plagioclase feldspar, microcline, and muscovite, with smaller amounts of biotite and tourmaline. The tourmaline is mostly black in color, and the majority of it exists as optically continuous skeletal crystals, but much larger, euhedral pegmatitic tourmaline crystals can also be found in the mountain's numerous, cross-cutting felsic dikes.
Embedded in the granite are xenoliths or pieces of foreign rocks entrained in the magma.
The granite intruded into the metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont region during the last stages of the Alleghenian Orogeny, which was the time when North America and North Africa collided. Over time, erosion eventually exposed the present mountain of more resistant igneous rock. This intrusion of granite also gave rise to Panola Mountain and Arabia Mountain, both in DeKalb County, smaller outcroppings farther south of Stone Mountain.
Natural history
The top of the mountain is a landscape of bare rock and rock pools, and it provides views of the surrounding area including the skyline of downtown Atlanta, often Kennesaw Mountain, and on very clear days even the Appalachian Mountains. On some days, the top of the mountain is shrouded in a heavy fog, and visibility may be limited to only a few feet.The clear freshwater pools on the summit form by rainwater gathering in eroded depressions, and are home to unusual clam shrimp and fairy shrimp. The tiny shrimp appear only during the rainy season. Through the process of cryptobiosis, the tiny shrimp eggs can remain dormant for years in the dried out depressions, awaiting favorable conditions. These vernal pools are also home to several federally listed rare and endangered plant species, such as black-spored quillwort and pool sprite.
The mountain's lower slopes are wooded. The rare Georgia oak was first discovered at the summit, and several specimens can easily be found along the walk-up trail and in the woods around the base of the mountain. In the fall, the Confederate yellow daisy flowers appear on the mountain, growing in rock crevices and in the large wooded areas. More than 120 wildflowers, most of them native to the Southern Appalachians and including several rare or federally protected species, have been identified on the mountain.
Confederate Memorial Carving
The largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, the Confederate Memorial Carving depicts three Confederate leaders of the Civil War: President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The sculpture was cut deep into the mountain, measures in height and in width, and lies above the ground.David Freeman, writing on the origins of the memorial, states: "Who first conceived of a Confederate memorial on the side of Stone Mountain has long been a matter of debate..... The written evidence...points to Francis Ticknor, a nineteenth-century physician and poet from Jones County, Georgia...in an 1869 poem.... William H. Terrell, an Atlanta attorney and son of a Confederate veteran,...suggested it publicly on May 26, 1914 in an editorial for the Atlanta Constitution." Three weeks later, Georgian John Temple Graves, editor of the New York American, suggested it should have a statue of Robert E. Lee.
The project was greatly advanced by C. Helen Plane, a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and first president and Honorary Life President of the Georgia State Division. After obtaining the approval of the Georgia UDC, she set up the UDC Stone Mountain Memorial Association in 1914, when she was 85 years old. She convinced Samuel Venable of the Venable Brothers Granite Company, an active Klan member and owner of the mountain, to deed one side of the mountain for the project. She chose the sculptor Gutzon Borglum for the project and invited him to visit the mountain. She met him at the Atlanta train station, took him to her family's summer home, Mont Rest, at the foot of the mountain, and introduced him to Samuel Venable,. Borglum also enlisted Luigi Del Bianco, whom he would also involve in Mount Rushmore.
Borglum's original plan was having five groups of figures, sixty-five mounted officers representing the states, General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry—some 700 to 1,000 figures, each from to high. In addition, Borglum planned a room cut into the mountain, wide, and high, faced by 13 columns.
Venable deeded the north face of the mountain to the UDC in 1916, on the condition that it complete a sizable Civil War monument in 12 years. Finances as well as technical problems slowed progress. The U.S. Mint issued a 1925 Commemorative silver U.S. half dollar, bearing the words "Stone Mountain", as a fundraiser for the monument. This issue, which required the approval of both the 1926 Congress and President Calvin Coolidge, was the largest issue of commemorative coins by the U.S. government up to that time.
Financial conflicts between Borglum and the Association led to his firing in 1925. Borglum destroyed his models, claiming that they were his property, but the Association disagreed and had a warrant issued for his arrest. He was warned of the arrest and narrowly escaped to North Carolina, whose governor, Angus McLean, refused to extradite him, though he could not return to Georgia. The affair was highly publicized and there was much discussion and discord, including discord between Sam Venable, the Association and Association president Hollins Randolph. The face of Lee that Borglum had partially completed was blasted off the mountain in 1928.
After a number of sculptors turned them down, Augustus Lukeman took up the work in 1925, with a different, smaller design. Fundraising was even more difficult after the public debate and name-calling, and work stopped in 1928. In 1941, segregationist Governor Eugene Talmadge formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to continue work on the memorial, but the project was delayed once again by the United States' entry into World War II.
In response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling and the birth of the civil rights movement, in 1958, at the urging of segregationist Governor Marvin Griffin, the Georgia legislature approved a measure to purchase Stone Mountain at a price of $1,125,000. In 1963, Walker Hancock was selected to complete the carving, and work began in 1964. The carving was dedicated in a ceremony on May 9, 1970. The carving was completed by Roy Faulkner on March 3, 1972. Faulkner in 1985 opened the Stone Mountain Carving Museum on nearby Memorial Drive commemorating the carving's history. An extensive archival collection related to the project is now at Emory University, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1915 to 1930; the finding aid provides a history of the project, and an index of the papers contained in the collection.
Four flags of the Confederacy are flown at the site. The Stone Mountain Memorial Lawn "contains...thirteen terraces—one for each Confederate state.... Each terrace flies the flag that the state flew as member of the Confederacy."