Another brick building in Elberton with at least a little granite is the old Masonic Hall (below). It may have been one of Elberton's most attractive buildings, although the boarded-up windows lessen its beauty today. The stone trim is granite, but a close examination reveals that it is not Elberton blue, and it may not be from Elberton at all. If so, the expression "hauling coals to Newcastle" was matched here by hauling granite to Elberton.
 

  
The image below shows one of the Elberton granite quarries. These quarries can be very deep: note the stairway at upper right of the image for scale. When North America and Africa collided in the Pennsyvanian (about 300 million years ago), the collsion buried and compressed pre-existing rocks to make the metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont featured elsewhere in this gallery. At about the same time, molten rock (magma) made its way up through the crust to form discrete bodies of granite. Stone Mountain is one topographically prominent example of these granite bodies. The Elberton Granite isn't as prominent as a landscape feature but has proven to be a great economic resource, as shown below.