Stone Mountain Memorial Association
The United Daughters of the Confederacy formed the Stone
Mountian Confederate Memorial Association at their Chattanooga convention in 1917.
Realizing that they could not pay sculptor Gutzon Borglum the
millions that he needed for his work on the Confederate memorial carving on Stone Mountain,
the UDC sought to organize a body with more financial muscle. Accordingly, they gathered
dozens of the South's leading political and economic figures into the Memorial Association.
This group took charge of the carving and eventually dismissed Borglum over disagreements
about use of the funds from the sale of Confederate Half Dollars.
The Association hired new sculptor Augustus Lukeman, but he
did not make adequate progress and the Venable family
reclaimed their land from the Memorial Associaion in 1928.
In 1958, when the state legislature finally gained access to the
property and decided to complete the carving, they reorganized the Memorial Association under
the name Stone Mountain Memorial Association. The removal of the the term "Confederate"
from the Association's title forecast the rapid dilution of the park's Confederate focus and the
diversification into vacationland.
