Ancient, massive stone fortress discovered in Northeast Georgia

Revealed by U.S. Geological Survey LIDAR

It is immediately east of the Alec Mountain Stone Oval and is aligned to the Winter Solstice Sunrise. The Alec Mountain shrine is aligned to True North & South, but has a slot, oriented to the Winter Solstice Sunset. There are so many other smaller stone mounds and cairns in this rugged portion of Habersham County, GA that this section of the Unicoi Trail was named Stonepile Road by early settlers. Stonepile Gap is near the fortification.

by Richard Thornton, Architect & City Planner

I was able to see from a public right of way, a section of the Habersham County stone wall with binoculars. It closely resembles this stone fortification that I discovered on the crest of Cerro Gordo Mountain in Central Mexico on July 16, 1970. The crest of Cerro Gordo overlooks Teotihuacan. Both walls contain a mixture of volcanic stones of various sizes interspersed with large boulders, which would have required many men to move.

Most North Americans do not know that extreme Northeast Georgia is an ancient volcanic zone that includes a hopefully extinct caldera, 11 miles in diameter! Alec Mountain is actually part of the wall of that caldera, plus the wall of a much younger caldera volcano.

Background

Earlier this week, the director of the foundation that is co-funding two documentary videos on my research here in the Georgia Mountains, along with the California Arts Council, telephoned me. He stated that the folks in Washington, DC want the second video to contain maps of large enough scale so they can understand where the ancient structures are located.

Early this morning, I was creating a larger scale lidar scan of the area around the Alec Mountain Stone Oval, when I was stunned to see the massive stone wall to the east of Alec Mountain. Holy Toledo! This changes everything. What else is in these rugged mountains between where I live and seven miles to the north in Batesville?

First priority is finishing the second video, which is due on November 1. After the leaves have fallen, I will try to get permission to examine and video tape the fortress wall. Given its orientation to the Winter Solstice it was probably also a religious shrine. The LIDAR scan suggests that there are also numerous stone cairns and mounds . . . perhaps both the earthen and stone piled type.

Back to work on the second video!