Thread by @donovanreyno1ds

History of Stone Mountain
(a thread)

As we know, Atlanta is a transient city. Many of us that call this city home, aren’t from here.

And personally, I love history.

So going back and exploring the landmarks of our city is interesting to me....and if it’s interesting to you, enjoy this thread...

Stone Mountain was formed at the same time as the Blue Ridge Mountains, around 300 million years ago.

The area around the mountain has been eroded with time, leaving us with an exposed piece of granite.

1/3 of it has been exposed. It extends 9 miles under the surface.

Like much of GA, the land was originally inhabited by the Native Americans.

The Cherokee & Creek settled in the area up to 9,000 years ago.

Natives used the mountain as a meeting/ceremonial place as well as quarried there to make tools.

Natives lived in the area, developed complex societies & even built a stone wall around the mountain’s top.

James Oglethorpe & the 1st English colonizers arrived in GA in 1733, and by the 1740s-50’s they’d reach Stone Mountain.

After years of failed negotiations, in 1790 delegates were sent by George Washington to meet the Creek leaders at the top of Stone Mountain & bring them to NYC for a treaty.

The controversial leader was Hoboi-Hili-Miko aka Alexander McGillivray...

McGillivray was a plantation owning son of a Creek mother & Scottish father. He was literate & well educated.

He used his link between the two worlds to his advantage (not always fairly) & got rich in the process.

In 1790, him & 29 other chiefs signed the Treaty of NYC.

The treaty made the Altamaha & Oconee rivers as the line b/w Creek lands & the US.

The govt agreed to remove illegal white settlers (but they didn’t) & the Creek agreed to return enslaved blacks who sought refuge.

McGillivray was paid an Army salary as part of this agreement.

The War of 1812 takes place almost 20 years later. It was a major factor in Natives being removed from their remaining land & losing sovereignty in America.

Whites settled the base of Stone Mountain in the late 1820s & the town was officially named Stone Mountain in 1847.

In the 1830s & 40s railroads are built to connect newly settled Marthasville (later to be named Atlanta), with the quarries of Stone Mountain, with Augusta.

Stone quarried from the mountain will go on to be used for buildings globally...but I’ll get to that later.

The mountain continued to be used for quarries & tourism up to the 1861 Civil War.

The war ends April 9th, 1865 & Abraham Lincoln is killed 6 days later.

The Ku Klux Klan is established in TN shortly after, in December 1865 as retaliation to reconstruction efforts in the South.

By 1869, operations grow at Stone Mountain. In 1870, a refuge for freed slaves is established nearby. The city, Shermantown, became the primary workforce for the mountain.

They go on to quarry stone used for the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, Fort Knox & Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

In 1887, Brothers Samuel & William Venable pay $48k for the mountain & surrounding land.

By 1890, skilled immigrants come from England, Wales, Scotland, Sweden, Norway & Italy to quarry at the mountain.

In 1909, talk of a confederate monument is tossed around in social circles.

In 1915, inspired by the soon to be released Birth of a Nation, owner Sam Venable, minister William Simmons & some of the men who lynched Leo Frank, led a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan at the top of the mountain & burned a cross.

This marked the beginning of a Klan resurgence.

Talk of a monument intensifies. The Venables deed part of the mountain to the Daughters of the Confederacy (led by Helen Plane) to start in 1916.

Gutzon Borglum, Danish sculptor & Klan member, designed the engraving, saying it would be the “the greatest monument ever built”.

Helen wanted Gutzon to have the KKK in the engraving.

“I feel it is due to the Klan which saved us from Negro domination and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?”

It would’ve happened but delays were caused by budget, WW1, Great Depression & WW2.

Gutzon, was fired & went on to start Mt Rushmore in 1927...

Stone Mtn sat unfinished for decades. Only Lee’s head was done.

The spark that spurred its completion was the Civil Rights Mvmt.

While being used as the KKK’s HQ & in retaliation to the progress of the Civil Right’s movement....

Gutzon’s work was sandblasted & the State of GA purchased the mountain & surrounding 3,200 acres of land in 1958 for ≈ $2M.

Work picks back up & is completed in March of 1972.

The engraving is 42 feet deep in some places. It is larger than a football field...larger than Mount Rushmore.

Robert E. Lee is as tall as a nine-story building.

Jefferson Davis’ thumb is the size of a sofa.

Since the 1980’s, the area has remained a tourist attraction. Attracting millions of visitors per year.

Many people come for the unique wildlife, scenery and the view. The mountain is home to a specific species of daisy & believe it or not, shrimp that live in the water pools.

As the monument to white supremacy towers over a now mostly black community, projecting light shows of MLK next to men who fought to keep his ancestors enslaved, many have called for its removal.

What do you think?
What should we do w/ Stone Mountain?

Thanks for joining me for another #ThreadThursday

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What should we talk about next week in Metro Atlanta history??