Stone Mountain is located northeast of Atlanta and the area is beautiful. We have always wanted to visit this monument and I made it a stop on our way back to Bella Terra.
Stone Mountain has a wonderful campground that is big enough for the USS Dutchstar! We always have to be careful when going to a “campground” vs. an “RV Park/Resort”. Campgrounds generally are not suited for a rig as big as ours but we were able to find spots that work for us!
Of course we were very close to Stone Mountain Park and had a great visit. If you don’t know about Stone Mountain, that is understandable as it is one of those parks that most people don’t know about.
The Mountain
Stone Mountain is a pluton, a type of igneousintrusion. Primarily composed of quartz monzonite, the dome of Stone Mountain was formed during the formation of the Blue Ridge Mountains around 300–350 million years ago (during the Carboniferous period), part of the Appalachian Mountains. It formed as a result of the upwelling of magma from within the Earth’s crust. This magma solidified to form granite within the crust five to ten miles below the surface.
The Carving
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 (on their favorite horses, Blackjack, Traveller, and Little Sorrel, respectively). The sculpture was cut 42 feet (13 m) deep into the mountain, measures 90 feet (27 m) in height and 190 feet (58 m) in width, and lies 400 feet (120 m) above the ground.
David Freeman, writing on the origins of the memorial, states: “Who first conceived of a Confederate memorial on the side of Stone Mountain has long been a matter of debate….. The written evidence…points to Francis Ticknor, a nineteenth-century physician and poet from Jones County, Georgia…in an 1869 poem…. 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. Three weeks later, Georgian John Temple Graves, editor of the New York American, suggested it should have a 70-foot (21 m) statue of Robert E. Lee.
The project was greatly advanced by 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. After obtaining the approval of the Georgia UDC, she set up the UDC Stone Mountain Memorial Association. She chose the sculptor Gutzon Borglum for the project and invited him to visit the mountain (although, despite his Ku Klux Klan involvement, she “would not shake his hand—he was, after all, a Yankee”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Mountain
We took a ride to the top of the mountain utilizing the Summit Skyride. It is like a cable car that gives you a great ride!
In the picture above you see many people “at the edge” but really it is a slope down to the bottom of the mountain. It is a subtle slope where people can walk down, or up the mountain. If you want a really good cardio workout, this is the place!
The O’Shea’s!
A huge plus to visiting the Atlanta area was seeing Sean & Jennifer O’Shea! Sean is a good high school friend from Mishawaka and lived just down the street from Patti while we were in school. Sean was a great hockey player in high school and in fact he still plays hockey with a men’s group. Sean & Jennifer have 2 girls and 1 boy who played sports (softball and football respectively) thru college. It was fun catching up with them!
Stone Mountain was a great stop and we highly recommend going there. It is fun and you learn a great deal about the history in the south.