Chief carver Roy Faulkner at work on theStone Mountain Memorial Carving, faceof General Robert E. Lee.
Georgia’s Stone Mountain
by Willard Neal
$2.00
This is a view of Stone Mountainbefore the carving.
FOREWORD
Every traveler, on first viewing Stone Mountain,has stood in awe at the foot of the loomingmonolith. Seasoned tourists and Georgia schoolchildren are affected just as pioneer explorers were.The towering rock is so impressive that eachindividual feels he is making the great discovery.
Questions arise. How did Stone Mountain cometo be? How old is it, and how high? Exactly howlarge is this biggest carving in the world. How wasit done? Who did it? Who first saw Stone Mountain?What effects has it had on the development ofour country?
Thus, this book. It is dedicated to those whocare enough to see and study the wonders oftheir country, and who, in their travels, have had theunexplainable and unexpected thrill of discoveringStone Mountain.
CARVING
Confederate President Jefferson Davis andGenerals Robert E. Lee and StonewallJackson ride forever on Stone Mountain.
Stone Mountain’s Confederate Memorial is theworld’s largest piece of sculpture, cut into the sideof the world’s biggest exposed mass of granite.The carving is 90 feet tall and 190 feetwide, stands eleven and a half feet out from theside of the mountain, and towers 400 feetabove the ground in a frame that is 360 feetsquare, or three acres. Fifty-five yearselapsed from the time of the original concept in1915 until completion of the three figures in1970. Not a blow of the hammer was struck for36 years, from 1928 to 1964.
At Stone Mountain things have a way ofcoming out quite differently than planned.
History is a little hazy on who firstenvisioned a Confederate Memorial on StoneMountain. Mrs. Helen Plane, charter member ofthe United Daughters of the Confederacy, wasquoted in 1909 as thinking it would be a fine placefor a monument. In 1912 John Temple Graves,editor of the New York American, after a visit backhome wrote a rousing editorial for the AtlantaGeorgian urging that the world’s greatestmonument be carved on the world’s finest pieceof stone.
Actual movement began in 1915 when Mrs.Plane, then president of the Atlanta chapter ofUDC, suggested having a 70-foot statue ofGeneral Robert E. Lee carved on the steep side ofthe mountain. The UDC consulted GutzonBorglum, who just then was being acclaimed for hisstatue of Abraham Lincoln. The first look atStone Mountain set Borglum’s imagination afire.Here was the biggest, finest solid block ofgranite any sculptor ever had an opportunity tocarve. A small figure in its center, he pointed out,would be like a postage stamp stuck on a barn.
The sculptor stayed several weeks at thenearby home of Samuel H. Venable, head of thefamily that owned the mountain, while he studiedthe great stone.