ELBERTON, Ga.—The Georgia Guidestones monument has left locals as confused by its destruction as by its creation.
In 1980, a mysterious man using the pseudonym of Robert C. Christian built the monument out of local granite.
Into it, he had carved a series of laws meant to guide humanity after a nuclear war.
Early on July 6, another mysterious person blew up one of the monument’s pillars, leaving the small town of Elberton with another big mystery.
The first ones to know something had happened were the monument’s neighbors Arlene Padgett and Bud McClure. The blast woke them both and left their team of horses on edge even hours later.
Padgett and McClure heard the explosion at 4 a.m. At first, both said they thought it was thunder and returned to sleep.
But even then, McClure said it seemed unusual.
“It didn’t echo. When you hear thunder down here, you’ll hear it go all over,” he said.
Whatever happened destroyed one of the Guidestones monument’s five pillars.
“They were terrorists on a budget,” McClure said of the attacker.
‘Asleep at the Wheel’
Whatever happened, there’s no shortage of means and motive, locals say.
Around Elberton, theories fluttered as to what happened. Some favored an “Act of God” from a lightning strike.
Others believed the monument was destroyed by a “Rod from God,” an orbital weapon that drops heavy metal rods that strike with explosive force.
Still, others said the destruction came from a missile.
Neighbor Arlayne Thomas said she guessed it was dynamite.
Elberton refers to itself as the “Granite Capital of the World” and isn’t short on high explosives.
“It’s probably dynamite with all the quarrying around here,” she said.
Thomas slept through the explosion.
Many locals disliked the monument, said Padgett. It was vandalized several times, leading to the installation of a security camera linked to the town’s emergency services.
But no one answered.
“Somebody must’ve been asleep at the wheel,” said Padgett.
Nevertheless, Padgett and McClure say they feel ambivalent about the monument’s destruction.
“There was nothing worth seeing to start with, in my opinion,” said McClure.
