Europeans first learned of the mountain in 1567, when Spanish explorers were told of a mountain farther inland which was "very high, shining when the sun set like a fire." By this time, the Stone Mountain area was inhabited by the Creek and (to a lesser extent) Cherokee peoples.
In the early 19th century, the area was known as Rock Mountain. After the founding of DeKalb County and the county seat of Decatur in 1822, Stone Mountain was a natural recreation area; it was common for young couples on dates to ride to the mountain on horseback. The mountain is easy to climb and there has been a path since the nineteenth century.
Entrepreneur Aaron Cloud built a 165 foot (50 m) wooden observation tower at the summit of the mountain in 1838, but it was destroyed by a storm and replaced by a much smaller tower in 1851. Visitors to the mountain would travel to the area by rail and road, and then walk up the 1.1-mile (1.8 km) mountaintop trail to the top, where Cloud also had a restaurant and club.
Granite quarrying started at Stone Mountain in the 1830s, but became a major industry following the completion of a railroad spur to the quarry site in 1847. This line was rebuilt by the Georgia Railroad in 1869. Over the years, Stone Mountain granite was used in many buildings and structures, including the locks of the Panama Canal, the steps to the East Wing of the United States Capitol and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. In recent years, granite suppliers in Georgia sent stone samples cut from Stone Mountain to the group responsible for planning the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.; the foundation later chose to use granite imported from China. Quarrying during earlier periods also destroyed several spectacular geological features on Stone Mountain, such as the Devil's Crossroads, which was located on top of the mountain.
The UDC established the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association (SMCMA) for fundraising and on-site supervision of the project. Venable and Borglum, both closely associated with the Klan, arranged to pack the SMCMA with Klan members. The SMCMA, along with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, continued fundraising efforts. Of the $250,000 (~$3.46 million in 2023) raised, part came from the federal government, which in 1925 issued commemorative fifty-cent coins with the soldiers Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on them. The image on the verso of the coin was based on The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson, executed in 1869 by Everett B. D. Fabrino Julio, itself an icon of Lost Cause mythology; it is now in the American Civil War Museum (until 2012 the Museum of the Confederacy). When the state completed the purchase in 1960, it condemned the property to void Venable's agreement to allow the Klan perpetual right to hold meetings on the premises.
In 1887, Stone Mountain was purchased for $45,000 by the Venable Brothers of Atlanta, who quarried the mountain for 24 more years, and descendants of the Venable family would retain ownership of the mountain until it was purchased by the State of Georgia in 1958.
David Freeman, writing on the origins of the memorial, states: "Who first conceived of a Confederate memorial on the side of Stone Mountain has long been a matter of debate..... The written evidence...points to Francis Ticknor, a nineteenth-century physician and poet from Jones County, Georgia...in an 1869 poem.... William H. Terrell, an Atlanta attorney and son of a Confederate veteran, ...suggested it publicly on May 26, 1914 in an editorial for the Atlanta Constitution." Three weeks later, Georgian John Temple Graves, editor of the New York American, suggested it should have a 70-foot (21 m) statue of Robert E. Lee.
Venable deeded the north face of the mountain to the UDC in 1916, on the condition that it complete a sizable Civil War monument in 12 years. Finances as well as technical problems slowed progress. The U.S. Mint issued a 1925 Commemorative silver U.S. half dollar, bearing the words "Stone Mountain", as a fundraiser for the monument. This issue, which required the approval of both the 1926 Congress and President Calvin Coolidge, was the largest issue of commemorative coins by the U.S. government up to that time.
Fundraising for the monument resumed in 1923. The influence of the UDC continued, in support of Mrs. Plane's vision of a carving explicitly for the purpose of creating a Confederate memorial. She suggested in a letter to the first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum:
James R. Venable attended the 1915 revival of the KKK on top of Stone Mountain and later became an Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which was one of the later KKK factions. He owned land at the base of the mountain that he had inherited from his ancestors, and in October 1923 he granted the Klan an easement with perpetual right to hold celebrations as they desired. However, the property was condemned in 1960 at the behest of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
After a number of sculptors turned them down, Augustus Lukeman took up the work in 1925, with a different, smaller design. Fundraising was even more difficult after the public debate and name-calling, and work stopped in 1928. In 1941, segregationist Governor Eugene Talmadge formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) to continue work on the memorial, but the project was delayed once again by the United States' entry into World War II (1941–45).
Financial conflicts between Borglum and the Association led to his firing in 1925. Borglum destroyed his models, claiming that they were his property, but the Association disagreed and had a warrant issued for his arrest. He was warned of the arrest and narrowly escaped to North Carolina, whose governor, Angus McLean, refused to extradite him, though he could not return to Georgia. The affair was highly publicized and there was much discussion and discord, including discord between Sam Venable, the Association and Association president Hollins Randolph. The face of Lee that Borglum had partially completed was blasted off the mountain in 1928.
According to George Weiblen's annotated calendar for Monday, May 7, 1928: "Mail plane crashed on mountain at 8:00 P.M." The pilot, Johnny S. Kytle (1905–1931), not only survived the crash, but managed to grab the mail and walk down the mountain.
In response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement, in 1958, at the urging of segregationist Governor Marvin Griffin, the Georgia legislature approved a measure to purchase Stone Mountain at a price of $1,125,000. In 1963, Walker Hancock was selected to complete the carving, and work began in 1964. The carving was dedicated in a ceremony on May 9, 1970. The carving was completed by Roy Faulkner on March 3, 1972. Faulkner in 1985 opened the Stone Mountain Carving Museum (now closed) on nearby Memorial Drive commemorating the carving's history. An extensive archival collection related to the project is now at Emory University, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1915 to 1930; the finding aid provides a history of the project, and an index of the papers contained in the collection.
The Klan also held cross-burnings at the summit of the mountain on different occasions from 1915 onward. This practice came to an end in 1962, when the Klan attempted to hold a mountaintop cross-burning in response to the NAACP holding its national convention in Atlanta. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association did not want either group using state property for demonstrations, and convinced Governor Ernest Vandiver to order state troopers to stop the event. Seventy troopers attempted to stop several hundred Klansmen gathered at the base of the mountain from climbing to the summit, but the Klansmen were armed with billy clubs, flashlights, and stones, and greatly outnumbered the officers. The police negotiated a truce with the local Klan Grand Dragon, under which the Klansmen would refrain from further violence, but 20 of their number would be allowed to climb the mountain for a “religious ceremony”, and the cross-burning was substituted with the lighting of a flare.
In 1963, there opened beneath the sculpture a replica plantation, where slave quarters were described as "neat" and "well furnished" in promotional materials. The slaves were called "hands" or "workers," and black actress Butterfly McQueen (from Gone with the Wind) was hired to guide and inform visitors. The park states that the plantation was inspired by Gone with the Wind. The plantation has been renamed Historic Square.
Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned the monument in his "I Have a Dream" speech at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when he said "let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!"
A grist mill dates from 1869 and was moved to the park in 1965. A covered bridge dates from 1892 and originally spanned the Oconee River in Athens, Georgia.
Stone Mountain, once owned by the Venable Brothers, was seen from the outset "as a memorial to the Confederacy." Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination, although the park had already been in use for a few years.
The park is owned by the state of Georgia. At its summit, the elevation is 1,686 feet (514 m) above sea level and 825 feet (251 m) above the surrounding area. Stone Mountain is well known for not only its geology, but also the enormous rock relief on its north face, the largest bas-relief artwork in the world. The carving, completed in 1972, depicts three Confederate leaders, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.
Around dusk on September 16, 2003, in clear weather, a small airplane circled the mountain five times, crashed headlong into the south side, and burst into flames. The pilot was killed. A witness testifying at the NTSB investigation stated that the pilot, a 69-year-old accountant, had threatened on multiple occasions to commit suicide by flying into the mountain. The official NTSB accident report lists the probable cause as "The pilot's intentional flight into the ground for the purpose of suicide while impaired by alcohol."
On October 11, 2015, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the park was considering a proposal of a permanent "Freedom Bell" honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and the line "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia", from King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. The proposed monument is inspired by a bell-ringing ceremony held in 2013 honoring the 50th anniversary of King's speech. It is not supported by the NAACP or King-founded Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who want the Confederate symbols removed rather than a King symbol added. Advance Local reported in 2015 that both the DeKalb County branch of the NAACP and the Sons of Confederate Veterans were opposed to the bell because it would have been put next to a Confederate monument. Representatives of the NAACP were quoted in the article saying "It's an attempt to gain support from blacks to keep these racist and demeaning symbols."
In July 2015, the Atlanta NAACP proposed removing the Confederate carving from Stone Mountain Park. However, this would require the approval of the Georgia Legislature, as would any change to a "military monument" in the state.
From 1999 to 2022, park attractions were managed by Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation, which had a 30-year contract to operate attractions. Under terms of a 1999 agreement, Herschend paid the state of Georgia $11 million (~$18.9 million in 2023) annually, while the Stone Mountain Memorial Association had the right to reject any project deemed unfit. In 2018, Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation decided to end their contract early after only 20 years due to record losses in 2017 and 2018, citing decreased revenues and “protests and division” fueled by the park’s ubiquitous Confederate imagery as factors. Bids for a new management company for Stone Mountain Park were submitted in October 2021. Thrive Attractions Management Group, LLC, started by the previous Vice President of Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation and general manager of Stone Mountain Park for 10 years, Michael Dombrowski, submitted the only bid to the Mountain Memorial Association, which was approved on May 23, 2022.
In August 2017, after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—a white nationalist protest against the removal of the Robert E. Lee monument and Stonewall Jackson sculpture—turned violent, many people across the country again demanded the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials as part of a national political debate. Georgia State Representative and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams called for the removal, by sandblasting, of Stone Mountain's carving. She called it "a blight upon our state".
In August 2017, the Klan was denied a permit for a mountaintop cross-burning.
Crossroads is a recreation of an 1872 Southern town with several attractions that include a modern 4-D movie theater, an adventure mini-golf course and a duck-tour ride. The duck boats have been replaced by the Rockin’ Land and Lake Tour in 2019 due to several deaths in other locations caused by duck-boat accidents. The tour includes a ride on a double-decker open-top bus and a pontoon boat ride at the marina. There are stores and restaurants. Craft demonstrators include glass blowing and candy-making.
On July 5, 2020, 100 to 200 armed protesters came to Stone Mountain to call for the carving's removal. Known as the Not Fucking Around Coalition (NFAC), it was a protest against both overt and systemic racism, calling out white supremacists, with the location being chosen in part due to its history as the place where the Ku Klux Klan was re-formed.
On August 15, 2020, the park administration temporarily closed its gates in reaction to a gathering of white nationalists planned there, and the city's public buses were suspended for the day. Nevertheless, a fight broke out downtown between groups of white supremacists, Black Lives Matter counter-protestors, and people who wish to keep Confederate monuments in place, though no injuries were reported.