Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock and the site of Stone Mountain Park, east of Atlanta, Georgia. Outside the park is the city of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The park is the most visited tourist site in the state of Georgia.
Stone Mountain, once owned by the Venable Brothers, was purchased by the state of Georgia in 1958 "as a memorial to the Confederacy". Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination, although recreational use of the park had been ongoing for several years prior. The park today is owned by the state of Georgia.
thumb|The mountain top and Skyride
thumbtime=12|thumb|Drone footage of Stone Mountain, 2022
The mountain, which ranges in composition from quartz monzonite to granite and granodiorite, is more than in circumference at its base. The summit of the mountain can be reached by a walk-up trail on the west side of the mountain or by the Skyride aerial tram.
At its summit, the elevation is above sea level and 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 high-relief artwork in the world. The carving, completed in 1972, depicts three Confederate leaders, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.
Geology
left|thumb|Stone Mountain through trees
Stone Mountain is a pluton, a type of igneous intrusion. 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 below the surface.
The Stone Mountain pluton continues underground at its longest point into Gwinnett County. Numerous reference books and Georgia literature have dubbed Stone Mountain as "the largest exposed piece of granite in the world". This misconception is most likely a result of misrepresentation by granite companies and early park administration. Stone Mountain, though often called a pink granite dome, actually ranges in composition from quartz monzonite to granite and granodiorite.
The minerals within the rock include quartz, plagioclase feldspar, microcline, and muscovite, with smaller amounts of biotite and tourmaline. The tourmaline is mostly black in color, and the majority of it exists as optically continuous skeletal crystals, but much larger, euhedral pegmatitic tourmaline crystals can also be found in the mountain's numerous, cross-cutting felsic dikes.
Embedded in the granite are xenoliths or pieces of foreign rocks entrained in the magma.
The granite intruded into the metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont region during the last stages of the Alleghenian Orogeny, which was the time when North America and North Africa collided. Over time, erosion eventually exposed the present mountain of more resistant igneous rock. This intrusion of granite also gave rise to Panola Mountain and Arabia Mountain, both in DeKalb County, smaller outcroppings farther south of Stone Mountain.
Natural history
thumb|Summit of Stone Mountain, [[Kennesaw Mountain (center) and Atlanta (left) in background]]
The top of the mountain is a landscape of bare rock and rock pools, and it provides views of the surrounding area including the skyline of downtown Atlanta, often Kennesaw Mountain, and on very clear days even the Appalachian Mountains. On some days, the top of the mountain is shrouded in a heavy fog, and visibility may be limited to only a few feet.
The clear freshwater pools on the summit form by rainwater gathering in eroded depressions, and are home to unusual clam shrimp and fairy shrimp. The tiny shrimp appear only during the rainy season. Through the process of cryptobiosis, the tiny shrimp eggs (or cysts) can remain dormant for years in the dried out depressions, awaiting favorable conditions. These vernal pools are also home to several federally listed rare and endangered plant species, such as black-spored quillwort (Isoetes melanospora) and pool sprite (also called snorkelwort, Gratiola amphiantha).
The mountain's lower slopes are wooded. The rare Georgia oak was first discovered at the summit, and several specimens can easily be found along the walk-up trail and in the woods around the base of the mountain. In the fall, the Confederate yellow daisy (Helianthus porteri) flowers appear on the mountain, growing in rock crevices and in the large wooded areas. More than 120 wildflowers, most of them native to the Southern Appalachians and including several rare or federally protected species, have been identified on the mountain.
<gallery>
File:Quercus georgiana leaves in late spring 05.jpg|Leaves of the Georgia oak
File:Helianthus-porteri-2.jpg|Confederate yellow daisy (Helianthus porteri)
File:Gratiola amphiantha.jpg|Pool sprite (Gratiola amphiantha)
File:Closeup of Black-spored Quillwort (Isoetes melanospora).jpg|Quillwort (Isoetes melanospora)
</gallery>
Confederate Memorial Carving
thumb|Close-up of the memorial
thumb|1925 [[Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar (design by Borglum)]]
right|thumb|U.S. postage stamp, 1970
page=2|thumb|Advertisement for Stone Mountain in Dixie Highway magazine, May 1925
right|thumb|Carving in progress in 1926
thumb|Stone Mountain sculpture in process
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 deep into the mountain, measures in height and in width, and lies 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." a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and first president and Honorary Life President of the Georgia State Division. She chose the sculptor Gutzon Borglum for the project and invited him to visit the mountain (although, despite his Ku Klux Klan involvement,
Borglum's original plan was having five groups of figures, sixty-five mounted officers representing the states (to be chosen by the states), General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry—some 700 to 1,000 figures, each from to high. In addition, Borglum planned a room cut into the mountain, wide, and high, faced by 13 columns. This issue, which required the approval of both the 1926 Congress and President Calvin Coolidge, was the largest issue of commemorative coins by the U.S. government up to that time.
Financial conflicts between Borglum and the Association led to his firing in 1925. The carving was completed by Roy Faulkner<!--- not the soccer player ---> on March 3, 1972. Faulkner in 1985 opened the Stone Mountain Carving Museum (now closed) on nearby Memorial Drive commemorating the carving's history. An extensive archival collection related to the project is now at Emory University, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1915 to 1930; the finding aid provides a history of the project, and an index of the papers contained in the collection. The Stone Mountain Memorial Lawn "contains...thirteen terraces—one for each Confederate state.... Each terrace flies the flag that the state flew as member of the Confederacy."
Replica plantation
In 1963, beneath the sculpture, a replica plantation whose slave quarters were described as "neat" and "well furnished" in promotional materials was opened to the public. The slaves were called "hands" or "workers", and black actress Butterfly McQueen (from Gone with the Wind) was hired to guide and inform visitors. The park states that the plantation was inspired by Gone with the Wind. "Historic Square was opened in 1963 and was originally known as Stone Acres Plantation and later as the Antebellum Plantation before being renamed Historic Square.... Historic Square's clapboard slave cabins were moved intact from the Graves Plantation near Covington, Georgia, where they were built between 1825 and 1840".
Involvement of the Ku Klux Klan
thumb|upright|[[William Joseph Simmons|William J. Simmons founded the reborn Klan atop Stone Mountain in 1915.]]
thumb|upright|[[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution|The Atlanta Constitution clipping Nov. 28, 1915, describing the Klan re-establishment atop Stone Mountain]]
According to sociologist James W. Loewen, Stone Mountain was "the sacred site to members of the second and third national klans." Loewen describes how the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan—the second Klan—was inspired by D. W. Griffith's 1915 Klan-glorifying film, The Birth of a Nation. That was followed in August by the highly publicized lynching of Leo Frank, who had been convicted of murder, in nearby Marietta, Georgia. On November 25 of the same year, Thanksgiving Day, a small group, including fifteen robed and hooded "charter members" of the new organization, met at the summit of Stone Mountain to create a new iteration of the Klan. Led by William J. Simmons, it included two elderly members of the original Klan. As part of their ceremony, they set up on the summit an altar covered with a flag, opened a Bible, and burned a cross.
James R. Venable attended the 1915 revival of the KKK on top of Stone Mountain and later became an Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which was one of the later KKK factions. He owned land at the base of the mountain that he had inherited from his ancestors, and in October 1923 he granted the Klan an easement with perpetual right to hold celebrations as they desired. However, the property was condemned in 1960 at the behest of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
The Klan also held cross-burnings at the summit of the mountain on different occasions from 1915 onward. This practice came to an end in 1962, when the Klan attempted to hold a mountaintop cross-burning in response to the NAACP holding its national convention in Atlanta.
The UDC established the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association (SMCMA) for fundraising and on-site supervision of the project. Venable and Borglum, both closely associated with the Klan, arranged to pack the SMCMA with Klan members. The SMCMA, along with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, continued fundraising efforts. Of the $250,000 (~$ in ) raised, part came from the federal government, which in 1925 issued commemorative fifty-cent coins with the soldiers Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on them. The image on the back of the coin was based on The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson, executed in 1869 by Everett B. D. Fabrino Julio, itself an icon of Lost Cause mythology; it is now in the American Civil War Museum (until 2012 the Museum of the Confederacy). When the state completed the purchase in 1960, it condemned the property to void Venable's agreement to allow the Klan perpetual right to hold meetings on the premises. This controversy was stimulated by a movement in other states to remove the Confederate battle flag and statues of Confederate leaders from public areas.