Part 3

Will T. Venable, who grew up in the house nearest the steep side of the mountain, told the writer of his boyhood there in the eighties for an article published sixty years later.

“The rarest sight is a rainbow on the mountain’s face,” Mr. Venable said. “I have seen but two or three in my lifetime. They can only appear very early in the morning, since the big rock faces to the north. The bow always starts on the ground, climbs the mountain and disappears on top. It almost makes you believe you might find a pot of gold up there.

“When it rains, the side of the mountain looks like a waterfall. The 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.