UPDATE 10:00 p.m.: One of America’s most mysterious and controversial monuments, the Georgia Guidestones in Elbert County, is no more.
The granite structure, installed in 1980, was rocked by an explosion and heavily damaged just after 4 a.m. Wednesday, and then was leveled 12 hours later by crews citing safety concerns.
Jason Rehr’s property adjoins the property that has been home to the mysterious Guidestones, known by some as Georgia Stonehenge, for the past four decades.
“The explosion woke us up about 4 o'clock in the morning,” Rehr said at the scene.” I just kind of gas it off like it was another earthquake because every now and then we'll feel them as they come through here where they have them in Edgefield or other places in South Carolina and we’ll kind of feel them.”
Rehr said they went on about their day and then started hearing about what had happened – especially as social media posts ran rampant.
“You take the stuff that you read on social media with a grain of salt, you know,” Rehr said. “Everybody's starting to speculate, all the rumors and stuff like that. But then it started to come out that they locked the roads down, they locked the airspace down. They had the GBI out here. And I was like, ‘ok, this is for real. We're not going anywhere today’.”
When Ga. 77 (Hartwell Highway) reopened mid-afternoon, the Rehrs ventured out to see what they could see from the roadside and were saddened by it.
“It's kind of devastating,” Rehr said. “We have a YouTube channel, and when people come to visit us, this is one of the spots where we bring them because it's kind of like a little tourist attraction. We've met people from all over the Dakotas, Florida, Alabama, up here. There's not a time that we travel this road that you don't see people up here checking it out. And it was always a nice little thing for Elbert County. And now somebody just went and destroyed it. So, it's kind a little bit harder. And it's kind of heartbreaking, in my opinion.”
But not everyone watching the 20-foot-tall monoliths fall at the nudges of a large excavator Wednesday afternoon was sad to see them go.
One man, who would only be identified as Shawn or “Wild Bill” from Barrow County, said he left class to drove to the site as soon as he learned from his wife of the damage. He wanted to celebrate the removal of one of the panels and to urge people to turn back to Jesus.
“The thing was evil,” he said. “Whether anybody wants to agree or not, especially in today's world, but the whole Doomsday, the population – everything that was about that thing was evil. It popped up in 1980, came out of nowhere. It's just pure evil. I believe the Satan, I guess himself, had it established. And in today's world, you know, our Father and King Jesus and the Holy Spirit is calling His people in, and this is just one of His ways of showing it.”
Rehr, on the other hand, said he doesn’t see it that way, but realizes it is another sign of the pervasive division happening in America.
“I'm a Christian,” Rehr said. “I love Jesus, I don't know where the Christians – or some of the Christians – are coming from that they say that it's Satanic and all that stuff. I don't read that into it when I go out there. Any monument or any statue or anything like that, you gotta learn to take it with a grain of salt. You know, some things are from our history, and some things are just put up for a point of view. I mean, this was erected during the Cold War time. And the whole idea behind it was just how to reboot everything when the nuclear apocalypse or whatever happened. And you have to just take that kind of stuff with a grain of salt. It's just like everything in America now. You know, there's gonna be people against wearing blue shirts and people against wearing red shirts. And unfortunately, the Guidestones they're not any different. People can't for some reason just see them for what they are and just somebody's point of view and go on down the road with it.”
Jason and Robin Rehr and their family have a YouTube channel, Big Bear Homestead, where, in his words, they “teach people how to escape the food deserts and how to get away from our broken food system by growing their own food to live in a more sustainable lifestyle and to also help the planet and heal the soil.”
They’ve done so for years in the shadow of the Georgia Guidestones – a shadow that no longer will be cast from the hillside next door.
UPDATE 7:47 p.m.: The remaining portion of the Georgia Guidestones monument has been completely destroyed for safety reasons. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has released surveillance video of the early morning explosion at Georgia Guidestones and a car that drove away shortly after the explosion.
UPDATE noon: The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has confirmed that unknown individuals detonated an explosive device around 4 a.m. Wednesday at the Georgia Guidestones in Elbert County.
"Elbert County Sheriff's Office personnel responded to discover the explosion destroyed a large portion of the structure," a tweet from GBI reads. "The Elbert County Sheriff's Office asked the GBI to assist with the investigation. GBI EOD are on scene conducting their examination of the site."
Anyone with information is asked to call Elbert County S.O. at (706) 283-2421 or the GBI at (706) 552-2309.
UPDATE 11:45 a.m.: Georgia Guidestones are a no fly zone within a quarter mile radius of the site, including drones, while law enforcement and first responders are on scene.
The Georgia Department of Transportation, in conjunction with local and state law enforcement, has temporarily closed Ga. 77 (Hartwell Highway) in Elbert County for a police investigation.
Two of four lanes have been reopened to ease traffic but may close as the situation unfolds, GDOT officials say.
Officials say there is an active and ongoing law enforcement situation near the historic Georgia Guidestones, where a possible explosion was reported early Wednesday.
Elbert County officials urge people to stay out of the area so local and state emergency personnel can do their jobs.
