Christmas at Stone Mountain

Stone Mountain’s annual Christmas is an incredible event for the whole family not to be missed. There are more than two million lights, live entertainment and the arrival of Santa Claus at the nightly parade, and a snow angel that flies high in the sky that brings a snowfall and fireworks celebration.
Festivities include:

The classic film “Polar Express” in a 4-D experience.

Two Fabulous Live Shows - A Hometown Holiday and Kickin’ Up Christmas.

Christmas Lasershow.

Crossroads Christmas Parade.

Over 2million lights on the Crossroads Buildings.

Christmas Event Dates: November 8 – December 30

Click HERE for more information

Snow Mountain Park - SNOW AT STONE MOUNTAIN!

New this year, Atlanta’s Stone Mountain Park transforms into a winterland with Snow Mountain, Atlanta’s first snow park. Come early and make a day of it. With three football fields of deep snow including a 400’ tubing hill and a 30,000 square foot play area, this new attraction has plenty for your whole family to do!

Based at Stone Mountain Park’s famous Laser Lawn, Snow Mountain keeps your entire family busy for hours. Eleven tubing runs and an oversized snow play area filled with a blizzard of snow activities make Snow Mountain Atlanta’s not-to-be-missed winter attraction. There’s even a play zone reserved for your littlest snow bunnies!

Snow Mountain’s state-of-the-art snow-making magic guarantees you more than 200 tons of fresh snow daily. And using the Mountain SnoLift to get you up the tubing hill, you’ll want to go again and again!

Take a break from the activity at many spots throughout the park. Watch the tubing action from the SnoDeck. Or catch your breath under a HotSpot. Check out SnoFire Point for warming your toes, roasting marshmallows and making everyone’s favorite winter treat—S’mores!

Plan your visit to Snow Mountain today.

Stone Mountain Park Pumpkin Festival- Last Weekend!

6th Annual Pumpkin Festival

Dates: October 3 - 26 (Fridays - Sundays)

Times:
10:00 AM - 6:00 PM on Fridays & Sundays
10:00 AM - 7:00 PM with Lasershow at 8:00 PM on Saturdays

Come out and enjoy some cooler weather at Atlanta’s favorite place to celebrate the fall season. Now in it’s 6th year, Stone Mountain Park’s annual Pumpkin Festival has become a family favorite with kids and parents alike.

Throughout weekends in October enjoy attractions, entertainment, activities and fall decorations that are fun for all ages.

Event Highlights Include:

NEW! Sci Guys Science Show
NEW! Sky Hike
NEW! Pumpkin Puppet Parade (Starts at 3:00pm - Meet at 2:50pm at the Dogwood)
NEW! Children’s Costume Contest (Saturdays Only)
NEW! Trick or Treating in the shops
Jack Squash’s A-MAZE-ing Adventure
Pie Eating Contests
Kroger Pumpkin Patch
Story Time & Tunes For Tots
Backyard Circus

Birthplace of Klan Chooses a Black Mayor

By KEVIN SACK/NY Times
Published: November 22, 1997

The 20th-century Ku Klux Klan was born here in 1915, and for half a century afterward this quaint town on the outskirts of Atlanta played host to an annual rally of cross-burning Klansmen.

Until his death in 1993, the town was home to James R. Venable, the hate-spewing imperial wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Even today, the granite monolith that gives the city its name is revered as a Confederate Rushmore because of its giant relief sculpture of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson.

Now Stone Mountain has elected a black mayor. What is more, it has elected a black mayor who happens to live in the same house where Mr. Venable, himself the mayor in the 1940’s, lived for most of his life.

”Tell me,” said Chuck E. Burris, the Mayor-elect, ”that God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

In a low-turnout election on Nov. 4, Mr. Burris defeated the incumbent, Pat Wheeler, by 278 votes to 260; a third candidate won 30.

Neither the small turnout — 16 percent of the town’s registered voters — nor the narrow margin of victory has stopped Mr. Burris and his wife, Marcia Baird Burris, from proclaiming the election a landmark in the racial evolution of the New South.

”There’s a new Klan in Stone Mountain,” Mr. Burris said in an interview, ”only it’s spelled with a C: c-l-a-n, citizens living as neighbors. And I guess I’m the black dragon.”

Mr. Burris’s election to the part-time, $300-a-month position is a tribute to his years of public involvement, both in Stone Mountain, where he has served two terms on the City Council, and in nearby Atlanta, where he worked as a budget analyst for that city’s first black Mayor, Maynard H. Jackson. It is also a testament to the gradual easing of racial politics in some Southern communities.

But perhaps above all, it reflects a remarkable demographic shift in the suburbs of cities like Atlanta, where certain middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, once exclusively white, have seemed to integrate almost overnight.

In 1980, white voters were 94 percent of the electorate in the city of Stone Mountain. By 1990, the figure had slipped to 85 percent. Only seven years later, half the registered voters in this town of 35,000 people are black.

It is not just the result of the mayoral election that suggests racial progress here. It is the nature of the campaign as well. Mr. Burris said that his opponents, both white, had not stooped to either overt or coded racial appeals and that he had not felt any racial animosity.

He also recalled with a chuckle the phone call he received from a 92-year-old white woman who had lived in Stone Mountain all her life.

”She wanted to know what kind of mayor I was going to be, was I going to be one way or the other,” Mr. Burris said. ”I said, ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ ”

The woman clarified: ”Are you going to be for the white people or the black people, or are you going to be for everybody?”

Mr. Burris assured the woman that he would try to represent everyone.

”She said, ‘Well, I don’t mind turning the city over to you blacks if y’all are going to act right.’ ”

Mr. Burris, a 46-year-old computer consultant, is the kind of man who savors life’s ironies like a smooth brandy. He is amused that Mr. Venable was born on Jan. 15, the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and had to spend his own final birthdays watching the nation celebrate the life of the civil rights martyr. The first thing Mr. Burris did upon moving into the Venable home, he said, was hang on a bedroom wall a framed picture of Dr. King, whose ”I have a dream” speech included a call to ”let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”

The Burrises did not at first want to buy Mr. Venable’s house, which was owned at the time by Mr. Venable’s daughter, Ginger V. Birts. But they eventually fell for the place, and now Mr. Burris views his earlier resistance in itself as a reflection of a certain kind of prejudice.

”It wasn’t until we got to know it,” he said, ”until we gave it a chance, until we opened the door and looked in, that we realized we liked the house and didn’t care who had owned it before.”

Mr. Burris has maintained a firm friendship with Ms. Birts, who says of the Burrises, ”They’re just great people.”

Both Ms. Birts and Mr. Burris recall that in 1991, Mr. Venable, by then elderly and ailing, allowed Mr. Burris to plant a campaign sign on the Venable lawn for his first run for the City Council.

After that election, Mr. Burris received a call from Ms. Birts, who said she wanted to insure that when her father died, the city would not redesignate a street that carried the Venable name. Sensing an opportunity, Mr. Burris told Ms. Birts that he would be pleased if the family would no longer allow Klansmen to hold rallies on its property at the base of the mountain, where three 60-foot crosses were burned each Labor Day weekend.

The deal was struck. And that, Marcia Burris jokes, left the Klan ”all dressed up with nowhere to go.”

Mr. Burris grew up in Louisiana, the son of a school principal and a high school English teacher. He used to pray for the end of summer, because ”at least there was a limit to homework during school.”

When he was 3 years old, he said, a cross was burned in his family’s yard. He said he remembered being awakened in the middle of the night by his mother, who told him to collect some toys, that they were leaving. Several years later, he said, a cross was burned at his school.

As a scholarship student at Morehouse College in 1967, he sat in on several Saturday seminars led by Dr. King, and once told Dr. King that he did not think he could respond to violence with nonviolence. Dr. King replied, ”You will always be a slave if you let other people control your behavior.”

To Mr. Burris’s thinking, as to many here, Stone Mountain’s image has been distorted by the activities of a few locals, an annual pilgrimage by outsiders and some distant history (the Klan had been largely inactive for decades before its rebirth at a 1915 rally on the mountain).

Of course, the Confederate carving on the mountain, which rises from a state park abutting the city, remains. The huge sculpture, depicting Lee, Davis and Jackson on horseback, was commissioned in 1916 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy as a memorial to their Civil War dead, but, with work proceeding in fits and starts for decades, it was 1970 before it was dedicated.

Mr. Burris says the sculpture does not bother him as much as the need to pour new sidewalks, reduce property tax appraisals on the elderly and cleanse the city of crack houses.

”Maybe things are getting a little better,” he said. ”If nothing else, hopefully my election will make people know that the city of Stone Mountain is a good town, that everybody is welcome here, that there are no bars to anyone moving here and finding friends and neighbors.”

Stone Mountain Park

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Stone Mountain Park is a green oasis where families and friends can enjoy the outdoors together. Listed in Frommer’s 500 Places to Visit with Your Kids Before They Grow Up and cited by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as one of “35 Natural Wonders in Georgia You Must See Before You Die,” Stone Mountain Park is located just 16 miles east of downtown Atlanta. The five square mile park is Georgia’s most visited attraction. Home to the world’s largest piece of exposed granite, Stone Mountain Park offers a variety ofattractions, entertainment and recreation.

There’s always something happening at Stone Mountain Park.

Main Park Entrance (May be unknown to some map programs)
U.S. Highway 78 East, Exit 8
Stone Mountain, GA 30087

Map to Center of Attractions Area 
1000 Robert E. Lee Drive
Stone Mountain, GA 30083

Web: www.stonemountainpark.com

Stone Mountain Park is easy to find. It is located just 16 miles east of downtown Atlanta on US Highway 78. Just take exit 39 B off Interstate 285 and follow Highway 78 east for 8 miles. The main entrance for Stone Mountain Park is exit 8 off of Highway 78.

Specific written directions are below:

From Downtown Atlanta (via I-20) 
Take I-20 East to I-285 North. Once on I-285 North, take Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Downtown/Midtown Atlanta (via I-85)
Take I-85 North to I-285 East. Once on I-285 East, take Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Dahlonega/Cumming/Alpharetta (via GA 400)
Take GA 400 South to I-285 East. Once on I-285 East, go past I-85 to Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
When exiting the Airport, follow signs to I-285. When you get to I-285, take I-285 East (towards Augusta). Follow I-285 to exit 39-B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Augusta and South Carolina (via I-20)
Take I-20 West to I-285 North. Once on I-285 North, take Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Greenville, South Carolina
Take I-85 South to I-285 East. Once on I-285 East, take Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Chattanooga, Tennessee
Take I-75 South to I-285 East. Continue on I-285 East to Exit 39B. Take Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Snellville/Athens (via U.S. Hwy 78)
Take U.S. Highway 78 West. After crossing the overpass above East/West Park Place Blvd. near the Stone Mountain Tennis Center, exit to the left at the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance, exit 8. Follow this exit ramp cautiously around long curve to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Birmingham, Alabama (via I-20)
Take I-20 East through Downtown Atlanta. After passing through downtown Atlanta, continue on I-20 East to I-285 North. Once on I-285 North, take Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

From Lake City, Florida / Valdosta, Georgia (via I-75)
Take I-75 North to I-675. Take I-675 North to I-285 East (Augusta). Continue on I-285 East to Exit 39B. Take Exit 39B, the U.S. Hwy 78 East (Snellville/Athens) exit. Travel 7.7 miles and take exit 8, the Stone Mountain Park Main Entrance. Follow the exit ramp to the East Gate entrance of Stone Mountain Park.

The World of Coca-Cola

The World of Coca-Cola at Pemberton Place celebrated its Grand Opening on May 24, 2007.  It’s the only place where you can explore the complete story—past, present and future—of the world’s best-known brand.

With 60,000 square feet for you to explore, the World of Coca-Cola features more than 1,200 artifacts from around the world that, until now, have never been displayed to the public before.

Around every corner you’ll experience something new and inviting.  You’ll see great interactive exhibits such as a thrilling, multi-sensory 4-D movie (3D glasses with moving seats) and a fully functioning bottling line.  You can even give our 7-foot Coca-Cola Polar Bear a big hug!  And of course, a World of Coca­Cola favorite—the tasting experience, will give you a refreshing opportunity to sample over 60 different products from around the world.  All this and much more make the World of Coca­Cola a unique and must-see Atlanta experience!  A visit of the entire attraction is estimated to last an average of 90 minutes.

121 Baker Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30313-1807

(404) 676-5151 or 1-800-676-COKE (2653)

Web: www.worldofcoca-cola.com

Directions:

Southbound via I-75/85:

Exit 249C Williams St.

Turn right onto Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd.

Parking garage is on the left at the second traffic light.

Northbound via I-75/85:

Exit 249D Spring St./W. Peachtree.

Turn right onto Spring St. ramp toward Centennial Olympic Park Dr.

Bear right onto Centennial Olympic Park Dr.

Take immediate left at traffic light onto Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd.

Parking garage is on the left at the first traffic light.

Eastbound or Westbound via I­20:

Exit I-75/85 North and follow Northbound via I-75/85 route.

Parking:

Parking is available in the Pemberton Place® parking garage for a fee of $10 per day.  The entrance is located at the stoplight on Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd. between Centennial Olympic Park Drive and Luckie Street.

Buses and vehicles larger than 7′H × 8′W × 16′L will qualify as oversized and cannot be accommodated in the Pemberton Place® parking garage.  Visitors can utilize the Georgia World Congress Center bus marshalling yard for a fee of $20 per day.

Buses should plan to utilize our bus lane along Baker St. for drop-off and pick-up of passengers

Public Transportation:

MARTA stop W1: Dome/GWCC/Philips Arena/CNN Center

MARTA stop N1: Peachtree Center.

It is approximately a 10 minute walk from either station.

CNN Tour

Journey into the heart of the world’s news leader at Inside CNN Atlanta. This 55-minute behind-the-scenes tour shows you exactly what it takes to deliver the news available to over 2 billion people worldwide.

General Information:

Hours: The Inside CNN tour is open daily from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm with tours departing approximately every 10 minutes.

The tour is closed on Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

Please Note:
Children: Children of all ages are allowed on the tour.  When purchasing tickets, please mention that your party will include a small child.
Photography: Photography is not allowed on the tour; however, opportunities exist for souvenir photographs along the way.
Visually and/or Hearing Impaired: If you are visually or hearing impaired, require a sign language interpreter, or otherwise need assistance to enjoy your visit, please contact 404-827-2300 at least 72 hours in advance so that we can work to accommodate the request.Accessibility: If you need assistance with accessibility as the Inside CNN Tour is a 55 minute walking tour that descends 8 flights of stairs, please contact 404-827-2300 at least 72 hours in advance of your visit to make arrangements. 
Languages: The Inside CNN Tour is conducted in English. We have written translations available in a variety of languages.

Directions: Inside CNN Atlanta is located at the corner of Marietta St. and Centennial Olympic Park Drive in downtown Atlanta.

Inside CNN Atlanta, One CNN Center, Atlanta, GA 30303 Map it!

For GPS or mapping software: 190 Marietta St, NW, Atlanta, GA 30303

Contact Information:

Phone: (404) 827-2300 or 877-4CNNTOUR
Email: atltour@cnn.com

Web: www.cnn.com/tour/atlanta

The Village Inn

Built in the 1820’s as a roadside inn, The Village Inn, Bed and Breakfast is the oldest structure in Historic Stone Mountain Village. The inn survived Sherman’s fiery torch because of its use as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War. If these walls could talk, what stories they would have to tell!

Completely renovated in 1995, The Village Inn now offers guests six comfortable guestrooms with modern amenities such as: individual climate control, whirlpool baths, gas fireplaces, ceiling fans, in-room coffee, hair dryers, irons/ironing boards, cable tv/vcr’s, and private telephone extensions with answering machines. Each of our rooms are warmly decorated with period antiques and guests enjoy complimentary snacks, beverages, and a full breakfast each morning.

The Village Inn Bed & Breakfast
992 Ridge Avenue
Stone Mountain, Georgia 30083
800-214-8385 or 770-469-3459
J. Ashley Anderson, Innkeeper
e.mail villageb@villageinnbb.com

Web: www.villageinnbb.com

Tupac Amaru Shakur Center

On June 11, 2005 the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts Visitor Center and Peace Garden in Stone Mountain, Georgia opened to the public. Over the last three years a sanctuary was built that fosters an environment that encourages freedom of expression and enhances the lives of youth through the arts. The Center contains rotating exhibits, Tupac memorabilia, a gift shop, dance floor, and rehearsal and rental space. Visitors travel to the Center and Peace Garden from all over the world!

The Peace Garden provides visitors with a reflective, commemorative, and tranquil haven. Replete with annual and perennial plants, trees, native plants, environmental features, and green space, the garden also serves as a convergence for community gardening and botanical education.

Stone Mountain Village

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, Stone Mountain Village has the look of a former time and place with the warmth and services of today. Enjoy the wonderful specialty shops and restaurants that offer a wide variety of unique items with something for everyone.

Located just outside of the West Gate of    Stone Mountain Park, 15 miles east of Atlanta, Stone Mountain Village has something for everyone!

DIRECTIONS

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