Although ground level agitation for a carving on the massive granite monolith at Stone Mountain had begun a few years earlier, Mrs. Helen Plane, charter member of the UDC and head of theAtlanta chapter, made the first substantive step towards the realization of that goal in 1915. In that year, she approached accomplished sculptor GutzonBorglum and solicited his support for a gigantic memorial carving. Borglum reacted enthusiastically to the idea, and he dreamed up an extremely elaborate design, detailed in his ""Handbook of Information about the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial". The UDC convinced the Venablefamily, owners of the mountain, to deed them access to the site in 1916, and Borglum was able to start work on the central group by 1923 (delayed primarily by US involvment in WWI, 1914-1919). Despite Mrs. Plane's desire to put figures of Klu Klux Klan members on the mountain alongside the Confederate heroes , Borglum included only Lee, Jackson, and Davis in the central group. The decision to narrow the group to these three resonated with other contemporary UDC decisions. By 1920, the Richmond UDC had already memorialized Lee, Jackson, and Davis on Richmond's Monument Avenue. The carving initiated by Gutzon Borglum bore the direct stamp of the UDC and was a clear manifestation of their single-minded goal to preserve and glorify the Confederate tradtion.
Almost immediately, the UDC experienced a decline in influence. Even before construction
began, during WWI, economic pressures compelled the UDC to hand over control of the project
to the newly formed Stone Mountain Memorial Association. Despite this shift in control,
however, the UDC left an indelible mark on Stone Mountain by clearly defining the project's
goals. Their initial conception of the carving as a memorial to specific Confederate heroes and to
the Confederate cause in general became incarnate in the panoramic Borglum plan, and their increasing institutional desire to
memorialize the women of the Confederacy as well expressed itself in Lukeman's Memorial Hall, dedicated to the Southland's women.
The UDC dominated the carving ideologically from the beginning stages through the 1950s,
when economic considerations led to the dilution of the Confederate focus.