Bulletin 426 Plate XXV A Stone Mountain GA

Plate XXV A, Original caption: "Stone Mountain, a granite dome, DeKalb County, GA."

This was published in 1910, prior to the construction of the Confederate Memorial.

Text from the volume referring to this figure:

Stone Mountain, which is a huge doming ridge of granite (Pl. XXV, A), is situated about 16 miles east of Atlanta in DeKalb County. It is an elliptical boss, with its longer axis trending northeast and southwest and its steepest side facing northward. It rises 686 feet above the adjacent lowland plain of crystalline rocks, and measures 7 miles in circumference around its base. The present ridge is the unreduced remnant of a much larger granite mass. The evidence favoring this conclusion is the fact that a belt of the same granite reduced to the general level of the surrounding Tertiary Piedmont plain skirts the north, west, and south sides of the ridge with a width varying from a quarter of a mile to more than a mile.

The granite of Stone Mountain and the granite gneiss of the adjacent Lithonia area in the same county have had the widest distribution and are the best known of the Georgia granites outside of the State. From the time of their first opening, prior to the civil war, to within the last few years the quarrying of stone in these two areas formed practically the whole granite industry in Georgia. These are the largest granite quarries in Georgia and they yield a much larger output than any other areas in the State.

Numerous quarries yielding an excellent light-gray granite are worked along the western and southern flanks of the ridge. (See Pl. XXV, B.) The stone has been used most extensively for general building purposes, and almost as largely for street material in the form of blocks and curbing. Its very light color makes it undesirable for monument stock. It has been marketed in the principal towns and cities in the South and West.