Stone Mountain

A massive granite monadnock featuring the largest Confederate monument in the world - a three-acre carving of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson completed in 1972 after efforts beginning in the 1910s.

Stone Mountain is a 1,686-foot granite dome featuring the world's largest high-relief sculpture - the Confederate Memorial Carving depicting President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The carving measures 90 by 190 feet, larger than Mount Rushmore, and is recessed 42 feet into the mountain.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who would later carve Mount Rushmore, was commissioned to create the memorial in 1916. Work halted in 1925 when Borglum was fired, and 47 years passed before the carving was completed in 1970. The dedication ceremony was held on May 9, 1970, one hundred years after Congress declared Decoration Day a national holiday.

The mountain's haunted history predates the carving. According to a 1946 Atlanta Constitution article, only people "born in a caul" have seen the ghost of Stone Mountain. The spirit allegedly haunts the "sunrise side" of the mountain, and horses and dogs are particularly sensitive to it, refusing to go around that side.

The mountain is inexorably tied to the Ku Klux Klan, which was reborn at its summit in 1915. No Civil War battles occurred here, and the men carved on its face never visited the site. Georgia purchased Stone Mountain in 1958 "as a memorial to the Confederacy," and the park opened April 14, 1965 - exactly 100 years after Lincoln's assassination.

Nearby, the Sycamore Grill building, a former Civil War hospital, is haunted by its past patients. Shadowy figures and shuffling sounds fill the empty building. The Warren House still bears signatures of Civil War soldiers who convalesced there - and their ghosts remain inside.