Stone Mountain

This article is about the rock. For the city, see Stone Mountain (city) .

View of the relief from the foot of the rock

Stone Mountain is a large granite boulder near Stone Mountain , Georgia , a suburb of Atlanta . According to some information, it is the largest exposed granite rock in the world and, after Mount Augustus , also the second largest monolith . The popular Uluṟu (also called "Ayers Rock") would actually relegate Stone Mountain to third place in terms of size, but contrary to popular belief, it is not a monolith.

Stone Mountain is known not only as a geological feature, but also for the largest bas-relief in the world, which is located on its north face.

description

The summit of the rock is 513  m above sea level and around 250 meters above the surrounding plateau, around a quarter of the elevation of the El Capitan rock in Yosemite National Park, which is also made of granite . The rock, which has a circumference of more than eight kilometers at the base, can be climbed on foot or by cable car.

The surface consists of bare rock with washouts in which rainwater collects, which feeds small streams. Some species of the brine shrimp species live in the cracks in the rock . The rare Georgia oak ( Quercus georgiana ) was first discovered on the rock plateau.

geology

The rock is an intrusive body consisting mainly of granite , which was formed around 300 million years ago when the Blue Ridge Mountains were formed, when magma was pressed from the earth's crust into near-earth layers and crystallized there. The rock, which was made of more durable material, was then gradually exposed through erosion processes . According to the type and number of xenolites , it is S-type granite (from molten sedimentary rock). It shows a flow structure in an east-west direction.

relief

Bas-relief

The relief on the north side of the rock shows three personalities of the Confederate States of America : President Jefferson Davis and the generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee . It's about 130 meters above the base of the rock and about the size of a soccer field. It is set down about seven meters deep into the rock. The group of figures measures about 30 by 60 meters and is cut about four meters deep at the deepest point. Since 1983 a laser show has been projected onto the relief at night .

Emergence

In 1909, centenaries were held in the United States to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln . It was on this occasion that the idea of ​​erecting a memorial to the memory of the Confederates first arose. Caroline Helen Jemison Plane (1829-1925) of the United Daughters of the Confederacy gave the first impetus. She approached the sculptor Gutzon Borglum , and he made some preliminary models by 1917; because of the First World War it was difficult to find sponsors.

In 1923 Borglum received $ 250,000, much of it raised by the Ku Klux Klan , and was able to start work, but was given an unrealistic three-year time limit. The following year, on the occasion of General Lee's birthday, the relief of Lee's head was ceremoniously unveiled to a large audience. Relations with Borglum deteriorated, however, and his contract was terminated in February 1925. Borglum left Georgia, not without shattering his models, and began work on Mount Rushmore . In April 1925 Augustus Lukeman was hired to continue the work and three years later Borglum's plant was blown off the mountain with dynamite. Then the money ran out, and by the time Lukeman died in 1935, work on the mountain had been suspended for several years.

In 1958, the state of Georgia bought the mountain for over a million dollars and placed the relief under a preservation order. The Stone Mountain Project was resurrected in 1963 and Walker Hancock was selected to complete the sculptural work. It was not until 1972 that Roy Faulkner completed the relief.

Stone Mountain and the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan plays a central role in the history of the monument. He has many connections to the monument and has held many ceremonies there.

The connection began with the dramatic rebirth of the Klan, triggered by the film " The Birth of a Nation " by David Wark Griffith , of the criminal activities of the original Ku Klux Klan in the period after the American Civil War romanticized. On November 25, 1915, a group of men in long robes and hoods met at Stone Mountain to burn a cross, and William Joseph Simmons , a Methodist preacher, took an oath as Grand Wizard of the renewed Ku Klux Klan. The oath was taken from him by Nathan Bedford Forrest II, the grandson of the original Imperial Grand Wizard Nathan B. Forrest . Samuel Venable, the owner of Stone Mountain, was the witness. In October 1923, Venable granted the KKK perpetual servitude with the right to hold celebrations there at will. After the state of Georgia took over the monument, the Venable family was obliged to revoke that commitment.

In contrast, almost 70 percent of the population of the suburb of Stone Mountain today is African-American and there has been intense debate for several years about whether to remove the monument, redesign it or add a memorial to Martin Luther King and the African-American civil rights movement .

criticism

The relief has repeatedly been the subject of public criticism because it depicts representatives of the Confederates who fought to preserve slavery in the American Civil War. Richard Rose, President of the NAACP in Atlanta, described the monument as the "greatest temple for white supremacy in the history of the world". There are repeated demonstrations against the relief on site.

Stone Mountain Park

The Confederate Memorial is surrounded by Stone Mountain Park with a golf course, carillon, airfield, etc. A cable car takes visitors to the top where they can look down on Atlanta; Kennesaw Mountain can often be seen, and on very clear days visibility extends as far as the Appalachians . The way to the summit is also easy to manage on foot. There is also a small radio tower on the mountain that broadcasts three non-commercial channels.

Stone Mountain Park is one of three privately owned state parks in Georgia. Currently the park and its rides are operated by the Silver Dollar City Company. Tennis, track cycling and archery competitions for the 1996 Summer Olympics were also held in the park .

Movie location

Around the mountain are some of the filming locations of the Italian comedy The Great with His Extra-Terrestrial Little One (1979). A place with a view of the rock relief serves as a meeting point with a UFO .

Web links

Commons : Stone Mountain Park (Georgia)  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

• Site of Stone Mountain (English)
• German website of Georgia USA Tourism

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stone Mountain Park History accessed April 28, 2014
2. ↑ ^{a b} Jay Busbee: The story of Stone Mountain, the world's largest Confederate monument. Yahoo, July 2, 2020, accessed July 7, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Rosalind Bentley: Armed marchers at Stone Mountain prompt stir on social media. Atlanta Journal Constitution, July 5, 2020, accessed July 7, 2020 . 
4. ↑ "City Guide Atlanta - All sports facilities and sights", Sport-Bild from June 26, 1996, pp. 37-48, p. 38
5. ^ Howard Hughes: Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult. Tauris IB 2011 ISBN 978-1-848856080 , p. 118. See also the DVD The big one with his extra-terrestrial little one . ems new media 2004 from 1:22:08 and the credits in the credits

Coordinates: 33 ° 48 ′  N , 84 ° 9 ′  W