Maryhill Stonehenge Memorial
Stonehenge Dr
Maryhill, WA
A full-size Stonehenge in concrete, built not as a folly but as the country's first memorial to the dead of the First World War.
Three miles from the Maryhill Museum, on its own bluff above the Columbia River, stands a full-scale replica of England's Stonehenge, built in reinforced concrete by the same restless dreamer, Sam Hill. Unlike the ruin on Salisbury Plain, this one was built complete, so you can stand in the center of a finished circle of standing stones with the gorge falling away below.
It looks at first like a rich man's whim, but it is something more serious. Hill raised it as the nation's first monument to the soldiers of the First World War, and the meaning he gave it turns the whole strange structure into a quiet argument against war itself.
What Guests Love
- A full-scale Stonehenge you can actually walk into, standing complete as the original never does
- The moving and unexpected story behind it, a pacifist's memorial to war's cost
- Wide-open views over the Columbia Gorge from the bluff, especially at sunrise and sunset
- Free, always open, and paired naturally with the Maryhill Museum just up the road
Worth Knowing
- It is a concrete replica, deliberately built complete, not an ancient site, and that is the point
- The bluff is exposed and often very windy, and summers are hot, so dress for the weather
- It is a war memorial and the resting place of its builder, so treat it as the solemn place it is meant to be
- The grounds are open daily and there is no fee to visit
Details
Maryhill, WA
Learn about Maryhill Stonehenge Memorial
Why a pacifist built Stonehenge
In 1915 Sam Hill visited the real Stonehenge in England in the company of Lord Kitchener, then Britain's Secretary of State for War. As Hill later told the story, someone remarked that the ancient Britons had offered human sacrifices to their gods of war at that circle. Hill, a lifelong Quaker and pacifist, took the idea and turned it on modern times.
To him, the millions of young men being fed into the trenches of the Great War were a form of needless human sacrifice, no less than any offering on an ancient altar. He resolved to build his own Stonehenge as a memorial, he said, to remind his fellow man of that incredible folly. The monument is not a celebration of war but a reproach to it.
The memorial to Klickitat County
The altar stone was dedicated on July 4, 1918, while the war was still raging, making Maryhill Stonehenge the first monument in the country built to honor the American dead of World War One. The full circle was completed in 1929 and rededicated that Memorial Day, when the names of local servicemen from Klickitat County who died in the war were set on the pillars.
Decades later the memorial was expanded. A separate monument was added nearby to honor county residents lost in World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam, and the refurbished Stonehenge and the new memorial were dedicated together in 1995. Sam Hill himself is buried in a crypt on the slope just below the circle, looking out over the river he loved.
Standing in the circle
Built like a piece of modern engineering, from slabs of reinforced concrete rather than quarried rock, the replica is aligned so that the sun rises over the heel stone at the summer solstice, just as the original does. Walking into the completed ring gives you something the real Stonehenge cannot, the sense of the monument whole, the way its builders may have first seen it.
The setting does the rest. The circle sits on the lip of a bluff with the wide Columbia Gorge spread out below, the river winding east and west, and the Oregon hills across the water. It is a stark, wind-scoured spot that suits the memorial's message, and the light at the ends of the day is unforgettable.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Maryhill
Maryhill Museum of Art
About 3 miles west
Sam Hill's other Columbia bluff landmark, a mansion turned art museum holding Rodin sculpture, a Romanian queen's treasures, and Native American collections.
Goldendale Observatory State Park
About 12 miles north
One of the Northwest's best public dark-sky observatories, on a hill above Goldendale, with a large telescope and evening star programs.
Columbia Hills Historical State Park
About 12 miles west
A gorge park across the river country known for its spring wildflowers and the ancient Native petroglyphs and pictographs preserved at Horsethief Lake.