2019 Rally Route - Friday September 20th, 2019 – Day 12

This morning while we enjoyed our coffee on the patio, we got to watch the fog over the lake raise. It was a beautiful and calm view! 

Driving out to the Georgia Guidestones, we did not expect to come upon the “Granite Capitol of the World” in Elberton Georgia. I would have said the granite capitol was in New Hampshire. But more about that later.

The reason we were driving out here, was to see the Georgia Guidestones. Here is what we learned from our visit. In 1979, a man going by the name of R.C. Christian, certainly a pseudonym, approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Company with the task of building a monument. He said that no one was to ever know his true identity or that of the group that he was representing. He seemed to have an endless supply of money to fund the project and by the terms of the legal contract all plans had to be destroyed after completion and all information about him withheld from the public.

In 1980, the stones were finished. They carry a tablet in front proclaiming, “Let these be Guidestones to an Age of Reason.” Engraved in the stones are ten guidelines meant to reestablish the planet and society, perhaps after an apocalypse. They are written in eight different languages, English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian.

The Guidestones also serve as an astronomical calendar, and every day at noon the sun shines through a narrow hole in the structure and illuminates the day’s date on an engraving. During an equinox or solstice, those who stand at the west side of a “mail slot” carved into the Guidestones can see the sunrise over the horizon. The four outer stones are positioned to mark the limits of the 18.6 year lunar declination cycle. An eye-level hole drilled into the center stone permits viewers to locate the North Star.

The names of four ancient languages are inscribed on the sides near the top: Babylonian cuneiform, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

Additionally an instructional tablet at the site speaks of a time capsule buried underneath the surface, though the dates on which the capsule was buried and when it is to be re-opened are missing. Whether this is intentional or the capsule was never buried is unknown.

R. C. Christian and his cohorts allowed the landowners full cattle grazing rights. In a small gesture of generosity, the mysterious backers of the Georgia Guidestones still permitted the owners of the land on which they were built to allow their cattle to graze on it for their entire natural lives—or until a nuclear war that wipes out 90% of the world’s population, whichever comes first.

The Guidestones continue to be a point of controversy. Conspiracy theorists and fundamentalists believe them to be the work of Satanists or the New World Order, fueled particularly by certain commandments such as “Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity” which can be ominously interpreted and the Guidestones have been seriously vandalized by such conspiracy theorists. Others believe them to be a message of wise prophecy, possibly the work of an eccentric man of science. However, if the past thirty years are any indication, we may never know who built them besides what is engraved on the Guidestones itself: “Sponsors: A Small Group of Americans Who Seek The Age Of Reason.”

On the instructional tablet, Jackie found “information available: Elberton Granite Museum and Exhibit.” It is not a planned stop, but we are in town now, so we are stopping!

At the Elberton Granite Museum & Exhibit we browsed through the large exhibit space on three levels and followed the story of this industry. We watched a film that explained that Elberton Georgia produces over 50% of the monumental granite used in the US. There are more than 100 granite processing facilities in and around Elberton. The Elberton vain of granite is 35 miles long, 6 miles wide and 13 miles deep ….. that’s a lot of granite!

We saw unique granite products of the past, like “Dutchy,” antique granite working tools, yesteryear’s methods of cutting and polishing granite, quarrying tools, educational exhibits relating to current methods of quarrying. On the three levels of exhibits.

A little more about “Dutchy”, he once was the zenith of a 22-foot pedestal in Elberton’s city center, now a broken Confederate monument now occupies a side room in the Elberton Granite Museum and Exhibit. The sculpture’s story bears relevance in contemporary culture, given the ongoing “problems” with Confederate monuments and the call by some to dismantle them.

Like many Confederate memorials, Elberton’s was created decades after the Civil War ended. Sculptor Arthur Beter created the 7-foot-tall Confederate soldier in the 1890s, and the citizens of Elberton erected it on July 15, 1898. Soon after, the same people dubbed the statue “Dutchy,” a reference to his resemblance of Pennsylvanian immigrants of Swiss and German origins. This comes, in part, from his bulbous headgear and heavy coat.

According to local lore, Beter, the sculptor, was an immigrant to the United States who purportedly did not understand the difference between Union and Confederate uniforms. Compared to the more naturalistic soldier that replaced him and to this day marks the center of the city’s downtown square, Dutchy is stylistically crude, with a blocky body and generic face with wide-open almond-shaped eyes. He sports a droopy mustache that creates the appearance of a half-smile. One night the townsfolk toppled the statue to the ground. Dutch was buried in town square for several decades and a more proper memorial was erected.

The museum is home to the World's Largest Solid Granite Spire. The 51-foot high spire was originally erected at the ARGO trucking company, as a company symbol of the company started in Elberton. This spire is a single piece and is something to behold.

We’re told that this spire was a fluke, not an order or anything intended at all. The quarry that the spire comes from was simply trying to square up a cut and out popped this extraordinary one piece granite rock. The “ARGO” trucking company owner decided to buy it and he had it erected at the company offices where it stood proudly for years until the company was sold; the spire was then taken down, was transferred to the museum and re-erected.

From the Granite Museum, we headed to the Callaway Plantation. It is a 56-acre historic restoration project. It offers visitors a glimpse into the by-gone era of working plantations in the agricultural South. IT shares with guests, the intimate story of one family's legacy. At the Callaway Plantation can see, feel, and touch 200 years of Wilkes County history. Callaway Plantation humbly began with a log cabin built by Job Callaway in 1785 then grew to a 3,000 acre working plantation complete with a brick mansion by the 1860s.

It was gifted to the City of Washington by the Callaway family, the property is now home to six unique historical structures. The family's first home on the plantation was a log cabin built by Job Callaway in 1783.

It burned down, but a cabin of similar design from the same era has been moved to the site. It consists of one room with a sleeping loft. There was a family of six that lived in this small cabin.

The family's second home still stands on the site, a two-story Federal Plain style house that they built around 1790.

It features period furnishings and decorations. It is called the “grey” house, you can see why.

The main building is a brick mansion built by the Callaway family around 1860 out of Georgia red clay.

Some of the original furniture is in the house. There was a men's parlor and a ladies parlor at the front of the house with unique windows, that slide up and the bottoms opened out to create a small doorway to exit the room onto the wraparound porch during events at the home.

Other structures include an 1891 one-room schoolhouse, an 1840 slave cabin, and a 1930 general store, all moved to the site from elsewhere in Georgia. There is also a corn crib, a house for making bricks, and a smoke house.

Our tour guide was also the general store keeper.