Mrs. Plane presented the memorial plan to Mr. Samuel H. Venable of
Venable Brothers, owners of the mountain, and Mr. Venable promptly
turned over the whole face of the mountain to the Memorial Association.
The exact form the memorial was to take had not at that time been
developed. Gutzon Borglum was, however, called in, and worked out a
stupendous idea, which he has since been commissioned to execute. On the
side of the mountain, about four hundred feet above the ground, a
roadway is to be gouged out of the granite. On this roadway will be
carved, in gigantic outlines, a Confederate army, headed by Lee and
Jackson on horseback. Other generals will follow, and will, in turn, be
followed by infantry, cavalry and artillery. The leading groups will be
in full relief and the equestrian figures will be fifty or more feet
tall. This means that the faces of the chief figures will measure almost
the height of a man. The figures to the rear of the long column will,
according to present plans, be in bas-relief, and the whole procession
will cover a strip perhaps a mile long, all of it carved out of the
solid mountainside.
A considerable tract of forest land at the foot of the great rock has
already been dedicated as a park. Here, concealed by the trees, at a
point below the main group of figures, a temple, with thirteen columns
representing the thirteen Confederate States, is to be hewn out of the
mountain, to be used as a place for the safe-keeping of Confederate
relics and archives.
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