Takeover Week: Stone Mountain (Jerome)
Monday, 9th July 2007 by James Turnbull
Welcome to Google Sightseeing Reader Takeover Week! Every day this week, one of you has been chosen to have their very own sight posted here on GSS, while Alex and James take a well deserved holiday. Today's sight is from Jerome - so have fun, play nice, and we'll see you next week!
The name pretty much gives what it is away - Stone Mountain is the largest exposed mass of granite in the world (a mountain made of stone, haha). Formed over 300 million years ago by emerging magma from the earth's crust, Stone Mountain is composed mainly of granite which is visible from miles around.
Apart from the geology aspect of it, Stone Mountain also boasts a bas-relief on the side depicting three figures of the short lived Confederate States of America - carved in 1909. Nowadays, a park exists encircling the mountain and the top of the mountain can be accessed by a 1.3 mile (about 2.1 km) hiking trail, or by taking a ride on the Skyride, an aerial tramway. Either way, the top provides a great view of the Atlanta skyline and surrounding suburbs. Last but not least, every week they hold the "world's largest" 40 minute laser show near the carving.
An interesting note is that if you look at it in Google Maps, you can zoom out quite a bit and still notice the huge rock as a small whitish speck.
Find out a lot more about this huge piece of granite at Wikipedia or visit the official site.
Thats what I call a carving
Link
Stone Mountain is an awesome tourist stop in Georgia! Really cool to climb and when we visited in 1999 they sold kites in the souvineer shop at the top so you can fly them from the mountain.
God, America should have let those southern states go. The country, and the world would have been a much better place!
And that Patrick is why racism still exists in this world. I am live in the Southern states, & I see no relevance to what being a Southerner has to do with anything. Its a carving on a rock, get over it.
Patrick,
Those types of comments portray true ignorance. You, my friend, are a bigot. I am offended by that statement, not as a Southerner but as an American. Like Richter says, its a carving on a rock. Furthermore, it is a carving representing a piece of American history. We, like virtually every other civilization in history, had a civil war and came out stronger for it. Should we wipe this portion of our history away because idiots like you are too shallow-minded to understand the significance of history?
The south isn’t too bad; I live near atlanta so maybe that’s why i don’t see as much rural stuff as most people think the south has; the carving is pretty neat though cause it looks huge when you’re standing on the lawn just in front of it. hiking is more fun though even though there are lots of poles along the way with inches of old gum stuck on them
Stone Mountain carving in detail