“Among my greatest experiences was, on several occasions, to look into the stone and visualize the full outline of the feature I was about to carve. Then I often got the opposite reaction just before I finished with a component such as a horse’s eye or nostril. From the close-up view it seemed to be the wrong shape or in the wrong place, and up there on the mountain you don’t step back for a better look. It was a relief, on coming down, to see that it fit.
“I realized at all times that I was carving the largest piece of sculpture that man ever attempted, one that would last through eternity.
“You could hardly do anything more satisfying than that.”
HISTORY
Magazine artist’s view of Stone Mountain in ante-bellum times.
The earliest history of the mountain was literally dug up by Lewis Larson, Jr., assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia State College in Atlanta. He explored the present bottom of the lake around the western side while the dam was being built. Along with more recent artifacts, Mr. Larson and his helpers collected shards of soapstone bowls and dishes, carved and used by Stone Age people possibly five thousand years ago, long before early Americans learned to shape and bake pottery.
Local historians have tried hard to find evidence that Hernando de Soto visited Stone Mountain. Actually, if that old conquistador had set out to touch all the points his name has been associated with, his iron-clad ghost would still be riding hard and only half way through its itinerary. De Soto certainly did not see this rock, or his chroniclers would have described it in detail as a large-scale replica of the Gibraltar they left behind.
The first white man to see Stone Mountain seems to have been Captain Juan Pardo, sent by the Spaniards in 1567 to encircle Georgia with forts. He followed somewhat the route taken by de Soto’s ill-fated expedition. Pardo fared some better. He got back to St. Augustine with his life, but he did little fortifying.
Pardo regarded as his most important achievement the discovery of what he called Crystal Mountain, a great mountain that glistened in the sun and was surrounded with diamonds and rubies and other precious stones lying on the ground for the picking up. Unfortunately, Indians kept him and his men too busy for gem collecting at that time.