Carving Facts

Stone Mountain's carving is the largest bas relief (high relief) sculpture in the world.

Robert E. Lee is as tall as a nine-story building. Jefferson Davis's thumb is the size of a sofa.

Three master sculptors worked on the carving.

The first and most famous, Gutzon Borglum, went on to create Mt. Rushmore. None of his work remains on Stone Mountain.

The final carving was done at a smaller scale than Borglum's design. Had it been completed in Borglum's original scale, it might look something like this:

The carving took from 1923 to 1972 to finish, but no work was done from 1928 to 1963. See carving history for details.

Location of ladder that workers used to reach the carving from the mountain's base