Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock and the site of Stone Mountain Park near Stone Mountain, Georgia. At its summit, the elevation is 1,686 feet (514 m) above sea level and 825 feet (251 m) 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 in the carving depicts three Confederate figures, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and has been the subject of widespread controversy.
Owned and paid for by the state of Georgia, Stone Mountain is the most-visited tourist attraction in the state. 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 (and their favorite horses, "Blackjack", "Traveller", and "Little Sorrel", respectively). The entire carved surface measures acres (6,400 m2). The carving of the three men towers 400 feet (120 m) above the ground, measures 76 by 158 feet (23 by 48 m), and is recessed 42 feet (13 m) into the mountain. The deepest point of the carving is at Lee's right elbow, which is 12 feet ( m) into the mountain's surface. "Who first conceived of a Confederate memorial on the side of Stone Mountain has long been a matter of The written to Francis Ticknor, a nineteenth-century physician and poet from Jones County, an 1869 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.":55 Three weeks later, Georgian John Temple Graves, editor of the New York American, suggested it should have a 70 feet (21 m) statue of Robert E. Lee.:56 The project was greatly advanced by Mrs. C. Helen Plane,a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and first president and Honorary Life President of the Georgia State Division.[17]:57 After obtaining the approval of the Georgia UDC, she set up the UDC Stone Mountain Memorial Association. It was she who chose Gutzon Borglum and invited him to visit the mountain (although, despite his Ku Klux Klan involvement,:79 she "would not shake his hand—he was, after all, a Yankee").58–59
Size: 5677px × 3911px
Location: Stone Mountain, Georgia
Photo credit: © American Photo Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., army, carve, carved, carving, civil, confederacy, confederate, davis, dixie, dixon, ga, georgia, granite, jackson, jefferson, kkk, klan, klux, ku, lee, mason, memorial, mountain, mtn, quartz, reb, rebel, robert, rock, south, southern, states, stone, stonewall, union, veteran, veterans, war
