These days a sight seeing vacation can be taken right at our own desk with this internet thing. After all, when enough time passes all we have left are the photos, anyway. So cut to the chase and just look at photos.
Today's vacation spot is a carving in a rock wall larger than Mt. Rushmore. But this one is spectacularly un-politically correct. It's the Confederate Memorial Carving at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia.
The first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum was hired in 1915, however, he didn't get far. And in 1925 he took off to go carve Mt. Rushmore. A second caver took over, but he didn't finish, either. Eventually, the state of Georgia bought the property and assigned the job to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
Walker Kirkland Hancock was given the job of finishing the sculpture. And in 1964 work resumed, this time with thermo-jet torch instead of dynamite. See a photo of one such torch here. The sculpture was finalized in 1972.
From the park website:
The largest high relief sculpture in the world, the Confederate Memorial Carving, depicts three Confederate heroes of the Civil War, President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The entire carved surface measures three-acres, larger than a football field and Mount Rushmore. The carving of the three men towers 400 feet above the ground, measures 90 by 190 feet, and is recessed 42 feet into the mountain. The deepest point of the carving is at Lee's elbow, which is 12 feet to the mountain's surface.
The park website said that workers would take shelter from rain in a horse's ear. Now that's big art.
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