From the Des Moines Register:
Did newspapers — local obituaries — identify the mystery man who built the “Georgia Guidestones” in the late 1970s?
All anyone knew for decades — at least on the national stage — was that the person who funded them went by the name of R. C. Christian (as in Roman Catholic Christian?) and dealt only with a local banker sworn to secrecy. He flew into the area, about seventy miles northeast of Atlanta, from different airports to conceal where he lived.
Here is a story we carried on them quite a few years ago. We visited the monuments [see here]. And here’s another. And one more. The most detailed report was in the magazine Wired (“American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions For the Post-Apocalypse”).
But here are the relevant clippings, indicating that the builder was from Iowa and died a decade and a half ago.
Is it really him? And if so, what about the “small group” of like-minded men he mentioned — the “patriotic” group he represented? Would the person who designed the stones (with messages in different languages, including Swahili) actually have had any ties with the K.K.K., or Freemasons (it was speculated he might have been linked to Rosicrucians)? If it was who many think it was, the furtive builder was a very Catholic surgeon who was interested in issues such as overpopulation and the environment — something spelled out in one message (“Maintain Humanity Under 500,000,000 In Perpetual Balance With Nature”) in the stones.
If it is him — and it may well be — what’s in the time capsule he buried at the site, and why has the area taken on such an occult significance to witches and New Agers?
From the Wikipedia-like history site Clio [caution, facts not verified]:
“The Georgia Guide stone are four giant granite stones that are all almost 20-ft tall placed in a circle with a capstone on top. They were revealed on March 22, 1980, after being sponsored by a man under the name of R.C. Christian. He represented a small group of foreigners whose goal was to leave a message for future generations. Their messages were so controversial that they were both sworn into secrecy. R.C. Christian is a false name for the man who provided the designs and funding for the controversial Georgia Guide stones monument. Herbert Hinie Kersten was actually his real name; he was a doctor from Fort Dodge, Iowa. Herbert Hinie Kersten showed great support for David Duke who is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in a letter he wrote to the South Flordia Sun Sentinel. William Sayles Doan, a creator and Fort Dodge antiquarian, asserts on camera that Kersten was a candid supremacist who voiced plans to make an estimation to authoritatively demonstrate that whites – and specifically Northern Europeans – were the world’s unrivaled race.”
[resources: Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]