Stonehenge
"To the memory of the soldiers and sailors of Klickitat County who gave their lives in defense of their country. This monument is erected in hope that others inspired by the example of their valor and their heroism may share in that love of liberty and burn with that fire of patriotism which death alone can quench."
These are the profound words inscribed on the alter stone inside of the Maryhill replica of Stonehenge located on a placid hillside overlooking the winding wonder that is the Columbia River Gorge.
I urge you to research the Quaker Samuel Hill whose vision this was, as he had a long and eventful life, but it was on one of his fifty (pre transcontinental flight era) trips to Europe in 1915 accompanied by Britain's Secretary of State for War Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener that he visited the original Stonehenge. According to Hills biographer, it was Lord Kitchener who told Samuel that Druids used this place for human sacrifice 4,000 years ago. Mr. Hill being a pacifist and having witnessed the most barbaric of wars ever drew a parallel between human sacrifice of old and the wars of man and so while the war to end all wars was still raging, he dedicated this monument in 1918.
Said Nelson B. Brooks at the dedication; "To Klickitat County, Washington attaches the distinction of being the first community in the Northwest and so far as reported the first in America, to consecrate a memorial to its sons who have met death while in the nation's service in the existing war ... six names have already been inscribed upon the monument: Dewey V. Bromley, John W. Cheshier, James B. Duncan, Robert F. Graham, Carl A. Lester, and Robert F. Venable. Space has been left for others who are expected in the nature of things to follow. Of these, 'One sleeps in the land where rolls the Oregon, three in the soil of the pioneered hills of Klickitat, one upon the blood-stained hills of France, and one who, when the ocean gave up its dead from the torpedoed Tuscania, found a brutal place beneath the heather of Scotland'.
Indeed, names since added:
Henry Allyn
Charles Auer
William O. Clary
Harry Gotfredson
Louis Leidl
Edward Lindblad
Harry O. Piendl
One of them was 28, the others between the ages of 19 and 21.
I'd seen pics of this place and watched video's on youtube, most of them leaving me, um, unimpressed and truth be told I made this nearly four hour drive solely to see an oddity in the middle of nowhere and to cross it off my list. Even pulling up to it my first thought was that it was even smaller than I had imagined and I was thankful for getting out of the car.... then I stepped inside...it was still dark, but bright enough to see and even though I knew no one is buried here I felt as though I were on hallowed ground, and I was.
Go see it, and never forget.
ps
while you are there, wander a little down the hill and say hi to Sam who was cremated and buried there three years after the completion of his monument.
Stonehenge
"To the memory of the soldiers and sailors of Klickitat County who gave their lives in defense of their country. This monument is erected in hope that others inspired by the example of their valor and their heroism may share in that love of liberty and burn with that fire of patriotism which death alone can quench."
These are the profound words inscribed on the alter stone inside of the Maryhill replica of Stonehenge located on a placid hillside overlooking the winding wonder that is the Columbia River Gorge.
I urge you to research the Quaker Samuel Hill whose vision this was, as he had a long and eventful life, but it was on one of his fifty (pre transcontinental flight era) trips to Europe in 1915 accompanied by Britain's Secretary of State for War Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener that he visited the original Stonehenge. According to Hills biographer, it was Lord Kitchener who told Samuel that Druids used this place for human sacrifice 4,000 years ago. Mr. Hill being a pacifist and having witnessed the most barbaric of wars ever drew a parallel between human sacrifice of old and the wars of man and so while the war to end all wars was still raging, he dedicated this monument in 1918.
Said Nelson B. Brooks at the dedication; "To Klickitat County, Washington attaches the distinction of being the first community in the Northwest and so far as reported the first in America, to consecrate a memorial to its sons who have met death while in the nation's service in the existing war ... six names have already been inscribed upon the monument: Dewey V. Bromley, John W. Cheshier, James B. Duncan, Robert F. Graham, Carl A. Lester, and Robert F. Venable. Space has been left for others who are expected in the nature of things to follow. Of these, 'One sleeps in the land where rolls the Oregon, three in the soil of the pioneered hills of Klickitat, one upon the blood-stained hills of France, and one who, when the ocean gave up its dead from the torpedoed Tuscania, found a brutal place beneath the heather of Scotland'.
Indeed, names since added:
Henry Allyn
Charles Auer
William O. Clary
Harry Gotfredson
Louis Leidl
Edward Lindblad
Harry O. Piendl
One of them was 28, the others between the ages of 19 and 21.
I'd seen pics of this place and watched video's on youtube, most of them leaving me, um, unimpressed and truth be told I made this nearly four hour drive solely to see an oddity in the middle of nowhere and to cross it off my list. Even pulling up to it my first thought was that it was even smaller than I had imagined and I was thankful for getting out of the car.... then I stepped inside...it was still dark, but bright enough to see and even though I knew no one is buried here I felt as though I were on hallowed ground, and I was.
Go see it, and never forget.
ps
while you are there, wander a little down the hill and say hi to Sam who was cremated and buried there three years after the completion of his monument.