MARYHILL, Wash. (AP) – As their sons returned wounded, dead or not at all from heavy fighting across the Atlantic in 1918, people in this small Columbia Gorge town sought to commemorate their sacrifice.
On a visit to the original Stonehenge in England, a Quaker named Sam Hill heard stories of dark doings and ritual killings. What better way to mark the Great War then raging, he thought, than to construct a replica near his estate in Maryhill, Washington, a town on the state’s southern rim with Oregon.
Hill argued that combat between nations was an irredeemable folly and the dead soldiers an offering to the “god of war.” So he built a West Coast incarnation of Stonehenge in tribute.
The monument nearly lines up with sunrise on the solstice, just like Stonehenge – though stories about Bronze Age human sacrifices there were almost certainly false. The original structure was likely one of the earliest calendars.
And much like Stonehenge, the replica draws a coterie of neo-Druids, pagans and wiccans each year on the summer solstice. On Saturday, about 30 turned out in small groups from Oregon and southern Washington.