Willard Neal

“ There is no record of the number who have fallen to their deaths at Stone Mountain, but it probably is far over a hundred. Some no doubt were suicides, but the great majority were innocent victims of the mountain’s treachery. The great dome rounds off so smoothly, and the curve downward increases so gradually that the too-venturesome explorer does not realize he is in trouble until he begins to slide, or attempts to climb back up. Then he is fortunate indeed if he can find a tiny crevice or slight depression that he can cling to until help comes down to him from above. ”

“ Stone Mountain, sixteen miles east of Atlanta, is the world’s largest exposed granite monolith. It is as great a wonder to geologists today as it was to Indian medicine men of ancient times. While geologists know how it was formed and what it is made of, they still are amazed at its tremendous size, its wonderful symmetry and its location, high and alone on a gently rolling plateau over thirty miles from its nearest mountain neighbor. ”

“ Meanwhile the older, softer granite overhead was weathering and turning to soil and eroding away. Some went to extend the coastal area of southeast Georgia and some to help build up the rich black belt of South Alabama.
In the two hundred million years since the intrusion, the two-mile-thick overlay has eroded down to its present level, leaving the hard core of Stone Mountain standing up like a great gray egg. The surface of the mountain wears very slowly—scuffing feet of millions of visitors have left barely discernible marks along the western trail. ”

“ Even today it is not hard to visualize weirdly painted warriors climbing the mountain in a torchlight procession and dancing all night around a roaring fire at the top. Consider, too, the old medicine men’s penchant for human sacrifice. ”

“ In a long drought many of the little clumps break off and go blowing about the mountainside like miniature tumbleweeds.
Veteran quarrymen have noted that it takes about 25 years for a freshly broken piece of granite to weather sufficiently for lichens to grow.
Most spectacular of all Stone Mountain’s plant life are the trees. Gnarled and twisted red cedars, almost a foot in diameter, cling desperately to narrow cracks in the deep slopes. Some are estimated at 500 to 800 years old, and they look every bit of their age. ”

“ The great whale-shaped mountain of granite, far from being the bare rock that it appears, is literally covered with plant life. Thirty specimens of plants are listed as rare, and many more are so uncommon or so regional as to be total strangers to nearly all visitors.
Botanists from Emory and Georgia State Universities in nearby Atlanta, and the University of Georgia in Athens, have regarded Stone Mountain as their special laboratory since the schools were founded. In 1961 a full-time horticulturist was employed to live on the mountain. ”

“ Heat fuses the bottom of the depression, leaving a slick, glassy surface.
Every lightning bolt for many years has left its mark. It is noticeable that they are thickest not on the highest points, but in depressions. Meteorologists say that is where the first drops from a shower soak into the granite and therefore make the best ground to attract the lightning.
From the time Gutzon Borglum began carving in 1923, stone rubble piled up at the base of the mountain below the monument. Hardly a man alive could remember what lay under it. ”

“ The Cross Roads became a favorite spot to have breakfast for parties who climbed the mountain to watch the sunrise. And everybody wondered that nature could make a compass as accurate and a great deal more spectacular than the ancient Egyptians could do. ”

“ The world’s largest sculpture presented many unprecedented problems. A difficult one was how to get a sketch of the monument on the mountainside. Borglum announced that he would pour chemicals from above to coat the stone with photographic emulsion, flash an image of his 4 model through a giant enlarger, and develop the picture by pouring down more chemicals. By the time photographers explained to him that it could not be done, his plan had been described in magazines and newspapers around the world, and the Stone Mountain Memorial was news everywhere. ”

“ At dawn the frenzied crowd probably hurled some luckless victim over the rim, while the women and children, who had waited below all night to see the poor devil fall, screamed and cheered, feeling sure that the gods would be so happy about the whole thing that they would assure bountiful crops and good hunting. ”

“ Trying to come down the mountain at night is a fearsome experience, say those who have done it. Every direction looks the same, and the horizon is just a few yards away, since the rock curves off into space.
The man most closely associated with Stone Mountain in recent years is Elias Nour, whose family operated a restaurant near the foot of the east trail. When Elias was thirteen he let himself be lowered at the end of a rope to rescue a boy who had slipped over the crest and was clinging for his life to a tiny depression in the rock. ”

“ Toting rocks and stacking them in a line is the kind of project ancient medicine men liked to think up to keep their tribesmen occupied, like building the great mounds throughout the South and down into Mexico and South America. ”

“ The following year the Society held a fair at Stone Mountain. A Savannah reporter, covering the event for his paper, wrote: “Wagons, carriages, carts and pedestrians are arriving every minute. Ladies form a very large proportion.” The correspondent’s concluding notation, that he slept in a room with twenty-eight other people, explains why the fair was held at Stone Mountain only two seasons. It was moved to more populous Atlanta and grew into the great Southeastern Fair, while the society evolved into the Georgia Department of Agriculture. ”

“ If you wish to see a Hypericum splendens, you will look for it on the steep slopes of Stone Mountain. This little hardwood shrub, about three feet tall with bright yellow blossoms, is found nowhere else on earth—not even on the similar, but lesser, granite outcrops of the area, in DeKalb and Rockdale Counties.
The Hypericums grow thickest in tiny crevices about halfway up the mountain and most are on the southwest side. None are found at the top nor the bottom. ”

“ Along the foot trail up the west slope are tall slim pines growing almost normally in what appears to be little patches of dirt. There may be deep loam-filled crevices below, but the health of the trees in such sparse soil attests to the rich mineral content. High up on the eastern slope, where a little silt has accumulated, is a small pine forest called Buzzard’s Roost.
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A rare tree is the Quercus Georgiana, or Georgia oak, which grows, but hardly flourishes, on Stone Mountain and neighboring outcrops. ”

“ The Amphianthus is not exclusive with Stone Mountain. It has been seen on Mount Rollaway in Rockdale County, but it is missing from some of the other granite outcrops. Cox called it a monotypic genus, which means it is represented by the one genus.
Sharing the larger rain pits are fairy shrimp, whose lives are frequently interrupted. These minute crustaceans, hardly more than an eighth of an inch long, look considerably like ocean-going shrimp when viewed through a magnifying glass, and they even swim backward. They disappear when the pits dry up, and come back soon after the next rain. ”

“ Around the base have been noted fingers of Stone Mountain granite extending outward into the old rock, or sometimes soil, where the molten material was forced into crevices during the lateral movement of underground strata.
The mountain is a natural target for lightning. Thunderclouds bombard it with their heaviest artillery. A bolt of lightning behaves very much like the thermo-jet torch. Its extreme heat converts moisture in underlying molecules to steam and literally blasts off the surface crystals, making a slight saucer-shaped depression four to six inches across. ”

“ Head of the Indian delegation at Stone Mountain was Alexander McGillivray, son of a Scotch trader and a half-breed Indian princess. After completing his education in Baltimore, McGillivray worked in a counting house in Savannah until the start of the Revolution, then returned to his mother’s tribe in Alabama where he quickly rose to chief of the United Creeks, and the Seminoles and Chicamaugas as well. He also became a colonel in the British Army, in return for inciting his tribesmen to harass settlers in Georgia and Tennessee. ”

“ They were not interested in defensive strongholds, and certainly not in building one that would entail carrying thousands of tons of rock up a steep mountain. All the early writers described the wall as a cleverly contrived fortress, since it blocked all trails leading to the summit. However, the most ignorant savage certainly would have realized that the top of Stone Mountain would be untenable in a siege, since there was no water and no access to food. It is the last place anyone would want to be caught when shooting started. ”

“ A drill was good for only a few minutes in the hard granite before its point was dulled, and a fresh one had to be inserted. The dull drills were sent by cable and pulley down to the shop on the ground just out of range of falling rock, where two blacksmiths were kept busy sharpening and repairing tools.
Whereas one man can hold a pneumatic drill straight up and down to break up the paving in a street, it took four men per hammer to drill horizontal holes into the face of the mountain. One guided the drill and held it in place. ”

“ It decomposes into fertile soil, as is readily seen by the growth that springs up where a little dirt and moisture collect on the gentler slopes of the mountain.
Stone Mountain is near the foot of the Appalachians, an extremely ancient mountain chain originally composed of granite gneiss. The peaks, in their youth, rose much higher than the brash young Rockies, or even taller than the Himalayas. Three hundred million years ago, when Stone Mountain was born, the land in the area stood perhaps 10,000 feet higher than it does now. ”

“ The Stone Mountain wall must have contained millions of rocks, for there were enough to let men and boys test their muscles by rolling stones off the mountain for more than a hundred years, until Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor, had the last ones thrown off in 1923 to make sure vandals did not start them rolling down among his workmen. ”

“ It has relatives in Mexico, but the American branch is confined entirely to Stone Mountain and other granite outcrops of Georgia’s Piedmont Plateau.
The Confederate Daisy grows in swales or crevices where sand or soil has collected to a depth of three or four inches to a foot. The plants would be regarded as skimpy little weeds throughout spring and summer. A dry summer stunts the year’s crop. But when frequent showers dampen the mountain’s surface, the scrawny plants put on a big spurt of growth in August. ”

“ The Association employed George Weiblen, whose family had operated the quarry at Stone Mountain, to assemble a crew and get the mountain ready. In 37 years the steel supports for the stairway had rusted out and required replacing, as did the steel cables and scaffolding. Bids were asked for a 400-foot elevator up to the carving, and when the costs seemed entirely too high, a prefabricated elevator was ordered, and the work crew put it up in 28 days. It was the world’s highest outside elevator.
A skilled carver was hired to begin the carving. ”

“ For fifty cents a visitor who already had winded himself reaching the summit could climb another 300 steps and get a still higher view.
William C. Richards, a correspondent for “Georgia Illustrated,” published in Macon, wrote in 1842:
“This singular edifice, resembling somewhat a lighthouse, is an octagonal pyramid built entirely of wood. It stands upon the rock with no fastening but its own gravity. It was built nearly three years ago at a cost of $5,000. The projector and proprietor is Mr. Aaron Cloud of McDonough, and the work is commonly called Cloud’s Tower. ”

“ The hardy little plant seems immune to drought and even indifferent to weather. Rain or shine, hot or cold, has no effect on its growth or blossoms. But each plant has a life expectancy of only about three years, after which it dies down completely, to be replaced by descendants coming up from seed. ”

“ While the memorial was being carved, workmen noticed a large hawk that soared by at eye level nearly every day, apparently quite interested in what they were doing. The men began leaving scraps of food at a certain place near the top of the carving. The bird flew in for lunch every afternoon, and he did not seem to mind if the men were working quite near. However, the loud roar of the jet torch disturbed him. ”

“ In 1958 the Georgia Legislature finally got around to developing the state’s greatest tourist attraction. It named a Stone Mountain Memorial Association, with authority to purchase the mountain and surrounding land, 3,200 acres in all, for a state park, and to complete a satisfactory Confederate monument. ”

“ Although the foreman had never had an art lesson, and his only previous experience with stones was throwing them, he was assigned some smoothing tasks by sculptor Hancock while the search continued for an experienced carver. Soon the search was forgotten. Roy Faulkner stayed on the face of the mountain for more than six years, to complete the world’s largest carving.
The new tool was the thermo-jet torch developed for use in granite quarries. ”