The KY Stonehenge is only slippery when wet, so keep that in mind should you be in the neighborhood of Mumfordville, Kentucky – just a mile off I-65, to be exact.
Chester Fryer, a Mumfordville native and enthusiastic rockhound, built the shrubbery-enhanced stone circle from rocks he found in the nearby Hatcher Valley. One would hope Fryer didn’t inadvertently destroy a previously unknown pre-Columbian megalithic site by accident. DOH!
Werner Wick’s Garden Stonehenge, Bavaria
Not everyone can have their own private Stonehenge but then, not everyone is Werner Wick of Velden, Bavaria, Germany. A professional horticulturist and landscape gardener, Wick browsed the local stone quarries over the years, selecting suitable stones weighing up to 20 tons and arranging them into a backyard henge. We’re sure Mrs. Wick is thrilled with the result.
“I’m not saying I’m esoteric,” explains Wick. “I stand on the ground with two feet, but I often lie down on the altar for a quarter of an hour and look up into the sky. Let the soul dangle.” His neighbors are probably glad that’s all he dangles.
Bamahenge
Virginia artist Mark Cline of Enchanted Castle Studios has earned a reputation for creating prehistoric replicas: the now-dismantled Foamhenge and a quartet of dinosaurs in Elberta, Alabama are just a couple of examples. Speaking of Elberta, the same local billionaire who commissioned the dinos contracted with Cline for a companion piece… ‘cuz dinosaurs and cave men once walked the Earth together, doncha know.
Unlike the comparatively fragile styrofoam used to build Foamhenge, Bamahenge is meant to be a permanent installation and as such its “stones” are made of lightweight painted fiberglass. The Elberta exhibit does share one salient characteristic with its Virginia forebear, however: it’s a full-size, exact replica of the original Stonehenge and it’s correctly oriented to calculate the summer solstice. Flickr user Julie Albert (Wanderingjule) visited Bamahenge in August of 2016 – the ‘henge and the dinos are lookin’ great!
Esperance Stonehenge, Australia
If one must build a Stonehenge clone, doing so while respect for the original concept should be the guiding principle. We would hazard a guess that those who constructed this superb Stonehenge in Esperance, Western Australia, felt the eyes of those ancient engineers gazing over their shoulders.
Designed to reflect the newly-finished state of the Wiltshire wonder, the Esperance Stonehenge is full-sized and its stones are rough-hewn pink granite. The cherry on the sundae is the location, out back in the beyond yet not as deserted and desert-like as the Outback. Flickr users Jim Beaudoin and Alecaus snapped the southern stone circle in 2015 and 2014 respectively.
A Stonehenge down under… you’d think something like that would turn the world upside down. Flickr user Stephen Jeffers (stephenj66) shows us what that might look like, sort of, with the above “Stonehenge Little Planet” created from a photo Jeffers took at Esperance on January 9th of 2012. Crikey!
