This paper will review the origins and geology of the Stone Mountain monolith in North Georgia, the history of the area and people and groups who have utilized the site for social and commercial purposes.
Stone Mountain is an igneous intrusion often referred to as a geological pluton. The granite pluton is part of the Piedmont Plateau region of the Appalachian Mountains and was formed along the same geological fault line that created the Blue Ridge Mountains but is not part of the Blue Ridge chain. Northern and Eastern Georgia have relatively frequent seismic activity with ten quakes recorded in 2013. These quakes occurred at an average depth of 9.6 km which make them less obvious and cause less property damage. This same seismic activity created Stone Mountain 300 million years ago during the last stages of the Alleghenian Orogeny when massive tectonic plate shifting allowed a large mass of magma from beneath the earth’s crust to well up . Flow structure markings on the mountain show the stone was formed underground after several eruption pulses failed to break through and then cooled to form, ultimately creating granite mass that rises 825 feet above ground, extends 9 miles underground and has a circumference of 5 miles at its base, making it the largest exposed dome in the world . Rising 1683 feet above sea level the summit of the dome is bare stone with rock pools and an unobstructed view that extends to Kennesaw Mountain, Amicacola Falls and Mt. Yonah state parks, including a breathtaking view of the Atlanta Skyline.
Stone Mountain rises in sharp contrast to the surrounding flat, rolling landscape creating a geomorphic monadnock. Geologists appear to have consensus of the volcanic origins and underground formation of t...
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Beaver, Patricia. Rural Community in the Appalachian South. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1981.
The site visited on this day was informally known as the Bedrock Knob (NTS grid reference: 120 342). It is in an area where patches of limestone and exposed bedrock are common. The bedrock is part of the Preca...
The third alluvial deposition consists of sand, silt and minor inter-bedded gravel, and again indicates Brimbank Park’s changing geology over time. (Geological map of Victoria, 1973). These deposits, as well as a nearby fault suggest volcanic activity 5-1.6 million years ago, which explains the olivine basalt (fig. 2) deposits which date back to to the Silurian and Tertiary period.
...the only major geologic event in the history of the Appalachians. Several glaciers have covered parts of the Northern Appalachians over the last three million years. (Appalachian tales) The mountains have been there ever since and that is how they were formed.
Cashin, Edward J., ed. A wilderness still the cradle of nature: frontier Georgia. Savannah: Beehive, 1994. Print.
Don Aker makes the novel The First Stone very interesting and intriguing without question because of his effective writing style. He uses simple, understandable, yet powerful vocabulary to draw the reader into each moment of the plot. The sentence structure was not very complex, but I think it was quite appropriate for a teenager to read. The use of the third- person omniscient point of view in the novel really helps the reader experience the story on a more personal level. The author’s narrative voice takes the front seat, and one is able to get inside the mind of the protagonist – Reef, a teenager who is piecing together the puzzle that is his life, gradually delving into deeper emotions and relationships with important characters and figures in the novel. The characters in the text Reef and Leeza are teenagers who have gone through some difficult events in their young lives. The reader is able to relive their memories and experiences, with flashbacks that Don Aker incorporates in the novel. The climax of the story develops quite naturally, with a sense of cohesiveness that is clearly present. As each chapter passes the reader has been give some insight about Leeza as the author throughout the novel, has moved back and forth between the perspectives of the two principal characters. Little by little, as time progresses, a turn of events causes the two main characters to be in the same place, in which Reef would change both their lives forever. By making two teenagers as the main focal points of the novel, the author really wants the target audience to feel a connection, and relate the novel to their lives or someone they...
Krinitzsky, E. L., and Willard Jay Turnbull. Loess Deposits of Mississippi. New York: Geological Society of America, 1967. Print.
Borglum searched for the “perfect” rock; he seemed to always have a complaint about them (SV; SV) (St. George 14). He would say some mountains have too many cracks, or the grain of the granite is coarse, and some were facing the wrong direction (St. George 14). The bottom half of some of the mountains found were a material called mica Schist; this rock is completely unsuitable for carving, therefore over seventy percent of the mountains found had to be passed by (SV; SV, CA SV) (Levisay). Borglum searched so long for the perfect rock because he believed that this monument he was about to build would be extremely important. He didn’t want just any old rock to be his masterpiece; he had to find the perfect one. The idea for looking in the Black Hills was first introduced by Doane Robinson (Westway). The Black hills was a great place to look because there was so much space, big mountains, and nature undiscovered by people yet. Borglum found a mountain that he loved the size of and even better he states that he loves it because it faces the South East (Jones). The mountain, being facing the South East, means that the sun will shine onto that half of them mountain for most of the day. The rock Borglum ...
Stonehenge, called the most photographed site in the world, draws nearly a million visitors a year, almost half of them from the united states (Wendy Mass 9) After Stonehenge has mystified an impressed generation of visitors and scholars who traveled to Salisbury plain in Wiltshire, England, 80 miles west of London, to marvel at the wonder of this ruin (Wendy Mass 8) but why is this ruin so magnificent? What draws so many people to it? Is it because the question of who built it and how it was built still lingers in the minds of many today. These questions have kept the mystery of Stonehenge alive for thousands of years, and the combined investigative efforts of historians, geologists, engineers, archaeologists, astronomers, chemists, and philosophers have continued to uncover more questions than answers (Wendy Mass 8)
2000 Rural Communities in the Black Warrior Valley, Alabama: The Role of Commoners in the Creation of the Moundville I Landscape. American Antiquity 65(2):pp. 337-354. Welch,
Later after the sea finally retreated occurred volcanic activity. Mountains rose through laccoliths, which also resemble volcanoes. These laccoliths differ in that they do not erupt. They shifted layers of rock upward in the shape of a dome. This specific piece of geologic morphology occurred at the end of the Cretaceous time. This marked the beginning of the Laramide Orogeny, which was a well-known period of mountain formation in western North America.
Miesse, Willian C. "Mount Shasta Geology and History." USGS: Volcano Hazards Program - Mount Shasta Geology and History. College of the Siskiyous Library, n.d. Web. 01 May 2014.
...These rocks include indurated conglomerates, coarse-grain granites, and Arkosic and breciated granites. Furthermore, there are evidences to indicate that faulting took place in the area. Hydrothermal and epithermal action must have intruded the rocks in the Goldfield area forming small stringers of quartz. There are also evidences of sedimentary rocks such as sandstones, limestone and conglomerates found near Roosevelt Lake (Eppinga, 2006).
Stonehenge is located near Salisbury, England and according to an archaeologist who has investigated Stonehenge close up, Mike Parker Pearson (2010) “...the new date for the raising of the sarsens [the large stones]...[is] between 2600 and 2480 B.C….” (p. 47). It consists of the large sarsen stones which are the ones that are in pictures and on postcards. Then there are smaller bluestones that are mixed in with the sarsens, Y and Z holes that form full circles around the sarsen stones, and Aubrey holes which form a circle around the entire structure. There is a large stone outside and a ways away from the circle called the heel stone. There are two station stones that stand to the side of the of the circle and over the Aubrey holes. They form a perfect rectangle with two barrows, or burial mounds, that are there.
inferred for the reservoir (4). The magma ascent to the surface occurred through a conduit of possibly 70 to 100 m in diameter (5). A thermal model predicts that such a reservoir should contain a core of partially molten magma (6) that can be detected by high-resolution seismic tomography.