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A Monument for All Time

The Stonehenge Memorial is now part of the National Register of Historic Places

story by JANET COOK | photos provided

The Stonehenge Memorial in the eastern Gorge is a curious sight to behold. It rises starkly from a plateau above the Columbia River in Washington, with nothing around it but dry grass and shrubs. From just the right angle, a weird juxtaposition of windmills appears in the background turning slowly in the incessant breeze.

It’s the stu of double-takes from passers-by on Highway 97 seeing it for the rst time. Or even the fth.

But there’s a story behind it, and a fascinating one at that — enough so that the Stonehenge Memorial was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places, deeming it o cially worthy of preservation for its historical signi cance.

Samuel Hill would surely approve. e memorial was his brainchild; he had it built within view of his mansion a few miles to the west, now the Maryhill Museum of Art.

“We are thrilled that Stonehenge Memorial has been added to the National Register,” said Maryhill Museum of Art’s executive director Colleen Schafroth. “ e designation recognizes Sam Hill’s singular vision and the enduring signi cance of the memorial as it relates to local, regional and national history. e museum itself was placed on the National Register in 1974. We are beyond excited to now have Stonehenge Memorial listed as well.” e origin story of Stonehenge Memorial is rooted in Sam Hill’s Quakerism. A

SAMUEL HILL

Samuel Hill built the Stonehenge Memorial to honor young men from Klickitat County killed in World War I.

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businessman, railroad executive and philanthropist, he bought 5,300 acres of land on the Washington side of the Columbia River in Klickitat County in the early 1900s and named it Maryhill after his daughter. His vision was to create a Quaker farming community there, but it never panned out. After a re burned down the few structures in the nascent town, Hill regrouped and turned his sights on building a mansion on one of the blu s, with construction starting in 1914.

While work was underway on his Maryhill home, Hill traveled to England in 1915 where he visited the site of prehistoric Stonehenge as a guest of Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War. At that time, the understanding of the ancient site’s origins was di erent from today, when it is thought to have been built as a temple aligned with the sun’s movements. For hundreds of years before, dating to the earliest archeological studies of the site in the 1600s, the prevailing view was that Stonehenge was constructed by Druids as a place for human sacri ce.

It was that interpretation that was presented to Hill during his visit. Kitchener purportedly told Hill, “Here the ancients 4,000 years ago o ered bloody sacri ces to their heathen gods of war.” At the time of Hill’s visit, World War I had been raging in Europe for months. For paci cist Hill, the visit to Stonehenge against the backdrop of a world war had a profound impact. “Four thousand years,” Hill reportedly responded to Kitchener, “we have come that far. And still we are sacri cing the blood of our youth to the gods of war.”

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Within two years the U.S. had entered the con ict, and by early 1918 six young men from Klickitat County had already been killed. Hill wanted to publicly honor their sacri ce and came up with the idea of a memorial in the likeness of Stonehenge to emphasize the brutality and folly of war — drawing a parallel from his understanding of the ancient site as one of human sacri ce to the pointless and cruel loss of life caused by the war in Europe.

Hill sought expertise from archeologists, engineers and astronomers in order to design the memorial to near-exact speci cations as the original. In a stroke of luck, a total eclipse of the sun in June 1918 brought noted astronomers to the Goldendale area as it was in the path of prime viewing. One of them, William Wallace Campbell, director of University of California’s Lick Observatory, agreed to visit Hill’s site and help determine the position of the altar stone and other elements of the memorial based on astronomical calculations.

Hill originally planned to construct the memorial out of local stone, but it proved too soft. He opted instead for cast-in-place, steel-reinforced concrete (the same material used to build his nearby mansion). To replicate the uneven texture of hand-hewn stone, the wood forms for each of the elements at the memorial were lined with crumpled tin.

On July 4, 1918, the altar stone was dedicated in a ceremony attended by hundreds of residents of Klickitat County as well as dignitaries from Portland and Seattle. e Goldendale Sentinel reported on the event: “To Klickitat County, Wash., attaches the distinction of being the rst community in the Northwest and so far as reported the rst 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... .” By Armistice Day in November of that year, the names of seven more young men had been added.

Courtesy of Maryhill Museum of Art Washington State historian Edmund Meany speaks at the 1918 dedication of the Stonehenge Memorial altar stone, which was attended by hundreds of area residents.

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e Stonehenge Memorial was a work-inprogress over the next decade. It was nally completed in 1929, with a re-dedication on Memorial Day that year. In the end, true to Hill’s goal, the memorial was a near-replica of how ancient Stonehenge probably looked in its prime. e memorial’s inner 40 pillars are nine feet high, the outer 30 stand at 16 feet. In the center of the circle are ve trilithons (two upright stones supporting a third stone that bridges them) of varying heights. e memorial di ers slightly in orientation, however, being aligned to the astronomical horizon rather than the actual midsummer sunrise, making for a three-degree di erence. Combined with a ve-degree di erence in latitude and the way the surrounding hills obscure the actual horizon, Stonehenge Memorial is not an accurate astronomical calendar like the prehistoric site. But for Hill, his memorial served the purpose it was intended for.

Hill died in 1931 and his remains were buried in a crypt below the Stonehenge Memorial. His nearby mansion opened to the public as the Maryhill Museum of Art in 1940. Over the years, the Stonehenge Memorial su ered the e ects of time. In 1955, Hill’s deteriorated burial crypt was replaced by a granite monument bearing his epitaph: “Samuel Hill: Amid nature’s great unrest, he sought rest.” e memorial itself underwent extensive repairs in 1995. Loose concrete and rusting rebar were removed, and many of the columns patched. Gra ti was cleaned o and a permanent weather coating was applied. rough a partnership between the Maryhill Museum of Art and the Klickitat County Veterans Association, a new memorial was erected nearby to honor Klickitat County residents who have died serving their country since World War I.

Sam Hill would undoubtedly be displeased to know that one hundred years on, we’re still sending our youth o to ght wars. But it’s a reality that keeps his memorial relevant in honoring the fallen. For anyone who visits Stonehenge Memorial can’t help but be awed by the thing, and re ective of why it’s there.

Carlos Miguel /stock.adobe.com The memorial is a near-replica of the prehistoric Stonehenge in England, although it differs slightly in orientation.

To learn more, go to maryhillmuseum.org

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