Though Arabia Mountain is best known for its unmistakable, lunar-like terrain, the crater-speckled mountain has many more stories to tell. The 40,000-acre heritage area is home to a rare flower species, one of the oldest African American communities in the state, and a monastery that dates to 1944. Three past presidents have ties to the Heritage Area, and the mountain was for many years the largest producer of granite used in chicken grit–the finely ground stone that helps fowl break down their food. These are just a few of the revelations in the book Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area, written by Brigette Jones and Atlanta contributor Jeff Dingler. The work was released in April from Arcadia Publishing, a South Carolina-based press known for its sepia-toned covers, which specializes in the history and imagery of small towns and regions. We asked Jones and Dingler to share some of their favorite facts they learned while writing the book. Wild America  Just off one of Arabia Mountain’s trailheads sits the Atlanta Wild Animal Rescue Effort, or AWARE, founded in 1999 to fill a gap in the metro area’s wildlife rehabilitation services. The nonprofit takes in injured and orphaned native Georgia wildlife of all kinds. Staff members there rescued everything from tiny frogs to snapping turtles and bald eagles.  “Anything that’s native, they’ll take and try to rehabilitate,” says Dingler, who also serves as the Communications Manager for the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area.  Animals that can’t be released back into the wild due to permanent injuries become part of AWARE’s animal ambassador program, making appearances at free public shows held on Saturdays and Sundays at 1 p.m. The organization also offers internships for aspiring veterinary professionals, many of them college students building their vet school applications, while also welcoming regular volunteers. Curb Appeal Long before it became a protected site, Arabia Mountain served as a granite quarry. Its stone was cut and shipped across the country, helping build iconic architecture such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the foundation for the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., and Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.  Closer to home, its most enduring legacy rests along our roadways, where it was primarily used for making curbs. In fact, much of the curbstone around metro Atlanta that isn’t concrete likely came from either Arabia Mountain or Stone Mountain, Dingler says. The two are easy to tell apart once you know what to look for, he adds: Arabia’s granite has a gray-and-white swirl known as “tidal gray,” while Stone Mountain’s has a salt-and-pepper fleck. Deep Roots Arabia’s heritage area stretches beyond the natural landscape to include historic sites. Flat Rock, for instance, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited Black communities in Georgia. Its roots trace back to Lyon Farm, a thousand-acre family farm that in 1860 was home to about 17 enslaved people. After emancipation, those families became the founders of Flat Rock.  “[After emancipation,] we know Atlanta booms; we know Chicago booms, and we know New York booms,” says Jones, who is Assistant Executive Director for the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area. “But Flat Rock was also booming, and those people came directly from Lyon Farm.”  Today, visitors can explore Flat Rock through self-guided tours of Lyon Farm, guided tours through the Arabia Alliance, or visit the Flat Rock Archive, housed in the old Bryant family homestead. The site of Flat Rock’s former Methodist Episcopal Church is also marked with an interpretive panel. Descendants of the Flat Rock community include some notable names, such as actor Chis Tucker and NFL Hall of Famer Warren Moon. Holy Ground In 1944, 21 Trappist monks from Bardstown, Kentucky, arrived in Conyers to found the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. From the start, the community was more progressive than its Deep South setting might suggest. The monastery supported integration–A 1944 photo in the book shows Friar John V. Mulvey hosting a retreat for a troop of Black boy scouts–and had deep ties to the local civil rights movement. Father Methodius, the Monastery’s resident stained glass artist, crafted 30 stained glass windows for three different Black Augusta churches, and he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in downtown Atlanta.  Thomas Merton, the renowned Catholic writer and member of the Kentucky abbey that originally founded the Conyers monastery, had a longstanding connection to the Arabia site, too. In his book The Sign of Jonas, Merton wrote warmly about Moses Green, a Black bricklayer who worked alongside the Holy Spirit monks. Rare Breed  Each fall, Helianthus porteri, or Porter’s sunflower, bursts from Arabia Mountain. The plant is often colloquially called a daisy due to its small size, but is in fact a sunflower, and only occurs in Georgia, South Carolina, and parts of Alabama. The blossoms are best seen from September into early October, with a good rainy summer often signaling a bigger show of its fiery blooms. Visitors can catch the spectacle during the heritage area’s annual Daisy Days hikes.  Shallow End Arabia is famous for its diamorpha, the tiny red succulents that carpet the rock. But it’s home to two other federally endangered plants, the snorkelwort and black-spored quillwort. Snorkelwort gets its name from the thin stem that stretches from the base of the pool to the surface, like a tiny snorkel, topped with a small lily-like flower. Black-spored quillwort looks more like blades of grass, with quill-shaped leaves that just barely break the water’s surface.  Both are found in those same shallow pools that pock the mountain’s surface. “They’re not quite as exciting or sexy as the diamorpha or the sunflowers, but they’re very cool,” says Dingler. The post Six things you didn’t know about Arabia Mountain appeared first on Atlanta Magazine. ...read more read less