water turns into foam and literally bubbles down. When I was a youngster
we used to hang our clothes on convenient limbs and stand under the
falls for a foam bath. It was pleasant while you were taking it, but
when you dried off, you found yourself covered with very fine, hard
sand, which itched like the mischief. As you look at the side of the
mountain, you see the courses taken by the water as it pours off. A
close-up shows that the water has eroded little ditches two or three
inches deep.
“The greatest show we ever had was the work on the carving,” Mr. Venable
continued. “If you have ever stood fascinated while a steam shovel dug a
hole in flat ground, maybe you can imagine how the work on the mountain
kept us entertained.”
An incident odd enough to be typical of Stone Mountain’s history took
place in 1928, just after air mail was inaugurated. Little single-seated
biplanes gave overnight service between Atlanta and New York, at a
period when night-flying instruments were few and crude, and Stone
Mountain lay directly in the path of flight. At the pilots’ insistence,
a contractor was commissioned to erect a safety light on top.
[Illustration: Lady fire watchers had an exciting Jeep ride and a
long climb to the old tower.]
[Illustration: {Fire watchers in Jeep}]
[Illustration: {Fire watchers in Jeep}]
[Illustration: {The old tower}]
Newspapers and visitors took note of the laborious work of carrying
steel poles and wire up the steep trail, then nothing more was said or
seen of the light until one dark night several weeks later Pilot Johnny
Kytle’s plane smashed itself and nine bags of mail helter skelter up the
steep slope, arousing neighbors for miles around. The Atlanta postmaster
was among those who rushed to the mountain to help Johnny and his load
of mail back to town.
Then an investigation was launched, to determine why there was no light
on the mountain. The foreman on the job brought out his work sheet,
showing how he had checked off each item—the poles, bolts and braces,
the insulators, the wire, the socket, and the final item, he had turned
on the electricity. But the list given him had contained no mention of a
light bulb, so he had not screwed one in!
Until the new recreation hall and observation tower were erected the
only construction on top of the mountain in recent years was a
60-foot-high forest fire-watcher’s tower, manned consecutively by two
women. They drove up every morning and down in the evening along the
foot trail by Jeep before any semblance of a road was made, and never
had a mishap. If a thundercloud approached, they came down in a hurry,
to reach the bottom before the storm bombarded the mountain with
lightning.
[Illustration: This photo shows Elias Nour actually rescuing a dog
that slid part way down the mountain.]
Night watching was done by men of the county fire department, and they
made it a point to go up before sundown and return after dawn. 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. Since then he has rescued
thirty-three more persons who ventured so far down the mountainside that
they could not climb back.
A peculiar thing, he noted, is that hardly any of the people he saved
ever bothered to thank him. Mostly they seemed embarrassed at having got
themselves into such a predicament, and they also appeared to think that
saving lives was part of his duties. An exception was a large dog, that
clung whining to the rock until young Nour reached his side. The dog
behaved perfectly while they were being hauled to safety. Once on top he
jumped upon Mr. Nour so suddenly that he knocked him down, then licked
his face and neck thoroughly before he was pulled away.
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.
One of the first acts of the new Stone Mountain Memorial Association was
to erect a steel storm fence around the rim of the mountain, probably
about the same location as the ancient rock wall, as a grim warning that
venturing farther would be courting disaster.
FLORA
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
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. The saucy little golden blossoms with many stamens are
about an inch across, and they appear in terminal clusters at the end of
branches. Just a few open at a time, so blooming is continuous through
most of June and July.
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.
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. Harold
Cox, from Stratford, England, studied at the Royal Botanical Gardens at
Kew. His assistant, Gerhard Oortman, grew up working in the magnificent
gardens of Eastern Holland. They have become intimately acquainted with
practically every weed, twig, bush and tree on Stone Mountain.
They have ascertained that the _Hypericum_ is the only shrub that grows
nowhere else. Hoping to have specimens where visitors could recognize
them, without running the risk of having souvenir hunters exterminate
the genus, Cox and Oortman rooted some cuttings in the greenhouse and
set them out in a garden plot across from the carving—and saw them
promptly wither and die. However, some seed planted in the same ground
have sprouted and seem to be thriving.
Stone Mountain’s botanical treasures are governed partly by the seasons
and partly by the amount of soil available. The most spectacular of the
unusual plants is the _Viguiera porteri_. It is so rare that it had no
common name until the Stone Mountain natives titled it Confederate
Daisy. 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. About the middle of September they burst into great beds of
blooms, making the nearly bare rock look like a golden meadow. The
profusion of color lasts until mid October.
In early spring the _Diamorpha cymosa_ spread like a bright red carpet
where soil is half to an inch deep. The color is in the plants, two or
three inches tall, and in the succulent round leaves. Tiny white
blossoms detract, rather than add, to the color.
The _Amphianthus pusillus_ has no common name. It is a member of the
snapdragon family, but is so small that it is rarely noticed except by
naturalists who are looking for it. However, it leads a remarkable
existence.
The _Amphianthus_ lives in the rain pits on top of the mountain, small
sunken areas where water collects after each shower. When the pit dries
up, the only sign of the plant is a little cyst under the sand and
gravel at the bottom. Immediately after a rain the cyst sends up a
little rosette of reed-like leaves that stay submerged. From their midst
a thread-like stem arises and sprouts two leaves half an inch across,
that float on the surface. A tiny bud appears between the two leaves,
and opens into a white flower no more than one-sixteenth of an inch
across.
When the pool dries up, the plant disappears, quickly turning to dust,
except for the cyst, which waits patiently for the next rain to bring it
back to life.
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.
It is presumed that all mature specimens die in the drought, leaving
eggs which hatch when the water returns.
The dark gray color of Stone Mountain is not the granite, but the
lichens which grow on practically all the weathered stone. Behaving like
booby traps, these pioneer plants have tricked a number of venturesome
climbers to their deaths. In a rain they absorb water and become quite
slippery, almost as if the stone were coated with grease. In dry weather
they crumble underfoot and the tiny particles roll like shot to start a
hiker sliding. Walking on almost level ground can become an adventure.
The lichens are a pioneer plant form, a symbiotic relationship of fungi
and algae. A fungus, unable to manufacture carbohydrates when alone,
must live as a parasite on another plant. An alga can manufacture sugar
or starch, provided it is kept moist and has the necessary ingredients.
Working as partners, the fungi absorb and hold moisture and dissolve
some essential chemicals from the rock; the algae mix these and cook
with the sun’s energy to make food for the partnership. Their assault is
the first step in reducing stone to soil. In this duty they are followed
by grasses, weeds, shrubs and finally trees.
There are three growth types of fungi: crustose, which appears as thin
crusts on the rocks, and is the most prevalent at Stone Mountain;
foliose, which has leaflike body and draws almost recognizable pictures;
and fruticose, which stands up in mossy little clumps.
[Illustration: Two young explorers beside a rain pit at the top,
where fairy shrimp and the rare _Amphianthus pusillus_ live.]
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
Stone Mountain has a rare genus of the crustose, the _Pyrenopsis
phaecocca_ which is found only in Georgia, on the granite outcrops of
the Piedmont section from Atlanta to Augusta. Another crustose variety
is a dull, dark red and grows in splotches, so it looks as if a boy with
a wide brush had been smearing the boulders with barn paint.
Some of Stone Mountain’s fruticose lichens stand up like little powder
puffs an inch or two tall, and are comparative to the extensive reindeer
moss of Alaska’s tundras. 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.
Pines, stooped and bent by mountain winds and stunted by long summer
droughts, poke their roots into rock crevices and strain mightily to
widen the slits. Some of these may be 150 years old. On the other hand,
a giant loblolly growing in the rich red loam at the foot of the
mountain, near the grist mill, measured nine feet in circumference, and
had only 90 growth rings.
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.
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
A rare tree is the _Quercus Georgiana_, or Georgia oak, which grows, but
hardly flourishes, on Stone Mountain and neighboring outcrops. It has
small glossy leaves two or three inches long, and tiny acorns. Few grow
taller than about 25 feet.
Where enough dirt collects there may be blackberries, huckleberries, and
muscadine vines.
Songbirds flock in great numbers to the gardens and groves around the
foot of Stone Mountain, but there is little wild life up on the rock,
itself. The soaring birds, such as vultures and hawks, are well
acquainted with the updrafts which lift them skyward like elevators when
the wind strikes the steep, smooth slopes, and they know where to find
the best rides for each direction the wind blows.
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. When it was
in operation he delayed his lunch until the flame was turned off.
The workmen placed their lunches in a locker in a shed at the foot of
the mountain every morning. They began finding the latch unfastened and
the tastiest sandwiches missing, and soon identified the thief by
footprints in the dust—a raccoon. A more intricate latch kept the coon
out of the locker. The men put out food for him, and he always picked it
up after they were gone, but he did not fare as well on charity as he
had done while stealing.
Stone Mountain has birds and bees and shrimp and lizards, but no snakes.
Harold Cox reported that he had not seen a single one in all his years
there.
GEOLOGY
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
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.
This mountain is a perfect example of the unbelievably powerful forces
and the eternal patience of nature, for it was a million years in the
making and lay a hundred million years incubating before it arose like a
great egg on a vast plain in another hundred million years.
Stone Mountain is 1,683 feet above sea level, and 825 feet above the
surrounding land which is itself a dividing ridge. Rain water running
off the eastern slope goes into the lake and out by the Yellow River.
That on the west finds its way to South River. The streams join 50 miles
away at Lake Jackson and flow on by the Ocmulgee and Altamaha to the
Atlantic Ocean. Three or four miles to the north, headwaters of
Peachtree Creek start their long trip to the Gulf of Mexico by way of
the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola.
The exposed granite of Stone Mountain covers 25 million square feet, or
583 acres. A surveyor figured the mass at 7,532,750,950 cubic feet.
Since that time several million cubic feet have been quarried and
shipped away, but all of man’s endeavors show as insignificant peelings
taken from the western and eastern slopes. Granite weighs 167.9 pounds
per cubic foot, if you are interested in computing the weight of Stone
Mountain.
Granite is the universal stone, containing practically all the natural
elements from uranium and aluminum to iron and silica and the rarer
minerals. 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.
During a period that may have lasted a million years or more, molten
stone under tremendous pressure was pushed upward from deep in the
earth. If the force behind it had been sufficient to drive it out at the
surface, the rock would have cooled rapidly and would have assumed a
different form.
The weight of two miles or so of rocks and earth overhead was sufficient
to contain the tremendous pressure of the molten flow, so the upper
crust literally floated on a hot liquid base.
Something had to give as liquid rock thrust into an area where there was
no space. Forty miles or so to the northwest is a chain of mountains, of
which Kennesaw is the tallest, formed by pressure from the side which
buckled underlying rocks up like a steep roof, or folded layers over
each other. Some of that pressure may have been applied by Stone
Mountain. This admittedly is theory—upper layers which held much of the
factual story have long since washed away.
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
Since the intruding material was contained in its original prison cell
and held under constant pressure, it cooled gradually, a process which
took perhaps a hundred million years. By cooling slowly, the molecules
formed compact, uniform crystals.
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. Meanwhile the
original crust is still wearing away at a rapid rate, so Stone Mountain
is continuing to grow taller in reference to its base.
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. 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. After nearly fifty years, when the
rubble was removed, there was revealed a low hill of the original
granite gneiss peeping out from under the mountain, or more accurately,
pushing into its side. The old rock clearly shows how it was twisted,
turned and tortured by the great pressures of two hundred million years
ago. Unable to shove aside this lot of rock, the molten mass tried to
engulf and digest it.
We see only the tip top of Stone Mountain. The shape around the base
that will be revealed when more of the surrounding rock erodes away in
the next million years is anybody’s guess. The depth surely is infinite,
for it is still connected down through the channel by which it spewed
upward.
Stone Mountain is unique. Chemical makeup of the granite, and its
physical characteristics, are different enough from all other stone in
the Southeast to indicate that this is the only portion of that ancient
flow of molten rock that has yet reached the surface.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
_A Short History of Georgia_, by E. Merton Coulter. University of North
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N. C., 1933.
_Georgia’s Landmarks, Memorials and Legends_, Volume II, by Lucian Lamar
Knight. Byrd Printing Co., Atlanta, 1913.
_Georgia: Unfinished State_, by Hal Steed. Alfred A. Knopf, New York,
1942.
_Empire Builders of Georgia_, by Ruth Elgin Suddeth, Isa Lloyd Osterhout
and George Lewis Hutcheson. The Steck Company, Austin, Tex., 1962.
_Georgia: A Guide to the Towns and Countryside._ Federal Writing
Project, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1940.
_Story of Georgia, Volume III_, by Walter G. Cooper. The American
Historical Society, Inc., New York, 1938.
_Cyclopedia of Georgia, Volume III_, by Ex-Governor Allen B. Candler and
General Clement A. Evans. State Historical Association, Atlanta,
1906.
_Sal-O-Quah or Boy Life Among the Cherokees_, by Francis R. Goulding.
Macon, Ga., 1870.
_How Stone Mountain Was Created_, by Poole Maynard, Ph.D. Waverly Press,
Inc., Baltimore, U. S. A., 1929.
_A Temple of Sacred Memories in the Breast of a Granite Mountain_, by
Augustus Lukeman. Lyon-Young, 1927.
_History of Stone Mountain_, by Leila Venable Mason Eldredge. 1950.
_Miscellanies of Georgia_, by Absalom H. Chappell. Gilbert Printing Co.,
Columbus, Ga., 1874.
_The History of Stone Mountain Memorial_, by Mildred Lewis Rutherford,
State Historian of Georgia Division of United Daughters of the
Confederacy.
Files of The Atlanta Journal, The Atlanta Constitution, The Atlanta
Georgian, The Atlanta Journal Magazine, The Atlanta Journal and
Constitution Magazine.
The Mary Carter Winter Stone Mountain Collection, donated to the Georgia
Department of Archives and History.
Page 4: Borglum studio photo, courtesy Mary Carter Winters
Page 5: Blast photo, courtesy Arthur B. Kellogg
Page 6: Lukeman photo, courtesy Augustus Lukeman family
Page 7: Workmen photo, courtesy Mary Carter Winters; Lukeman model photo
by Roy Faulkner
Page 8: Lukeman unveiling photo by Kenneth Rogers
Page 11: Upper left photo by Joe Tucker
Page 12: Torch photos by Frank Rippitoe; Hancock and model photo by Roy
Faulkner
Page 16: Photo by Kenneth Rogers
Page 20-21: Carving color photo by Sara Stilwell
Page 23: Flower color photos by Kenneth Rogers
Page 26: Photo by Kenneth Rogers
Page 29: Photo by Kenneth Rogers
Page 32: Jeep photos by Sara Stilwell
Page 33: Tower photo by Kenneth Rogers
Page 39: Photo by Sara Stilwell
Page 40-41: Photos by Kenneth Rogers
Page 44: Photo by Kenneth Rogers
BACK COVER PHOTOS
Scenes from the formal dedication of the Stone Mountain Memorial
Carving, May, 1970.