If you wanted to see Stonehenge but haven’t managed to fly to England, there is an alternative in the United States. Around a century ago philanthropist Sam Hill built a replica in a rural corner of Washington state. The story behind it has a uniquely American twist that is relevant to car buffs.
Hill was a Harvard-educated lawyer and prominent Pacific Northwest business leader. He was president of the Seattle Gas and Electric company as well as the Washington State Good Roads Association (Maryhill Museum of Art, 2025a).
From an auto history perspective, Hill was important in championing the construction of a highway system that today allows one to easily explore by car the rural parts of the Pacific Northwest.
For example, he was a major force behind the creation of the Columbia River Highway on the Oregon side of the river. His dream was to “build a great highway so that the world can realize the magnificence and grandeur of the Columbia River Gorge” (Maryhill Museum of Art, 2025a).
Hill was also a Quaker who attempted to create a self-sufficient farming community called Maryhill in a remote area near the Columbia River. That included an American Stonehenge as a memorial for those who died in World War I. The community failed to catch on and Hill passed away in 1931. Stonehenge and Hill’s nearby mansion became part of the Maryhill Museum (Wikipedia, 2025a).
Over the river and through the hills . . .
You can only get to the Maryhill Stonehenge by driving quite a ways through rolling hills dotted with little more than windmills and cattle.
Stonehenge is situated on a quiet bluff above the Columbia River. From the site you can see the nearby Sam Hill Memorial Bridge, which takes you to Oregon.
Maryhill is in Klickitat County. This is one of the least-populated parts of Washington state, with under 23,000 people. Maryhill Museum and Stonehenge are among the area’s biggest tourist attractions (Wikipedia, 2025b).
To go inside the Maryhill Museum you have to pay an admission charge, but you can check out Stonehenge for free. It is located a few miles down the road next to the site of the village Hill attempted to build. It once included a store, post office, church, blacksmith’s shop and stable (Maryhill Museum of Art, 2025a).
The original goal was to construct Stonehenge out of local rock, but that didn’t work out so Hill switched to reinforced concrete. The museum’s (2025a) website notes that the “rough, hand-hewn looking texture was created by lining the wooden forms with crumpled tin.”
Hill designed the site to duplicate the original Stonehenge in size and form, but it was “aligned to the astronomical horizon rather than the actual midsummer sunrise. This results in a three degree difference from the original structure” (Maryhill Museum of Art, 2025b).
Stonehenge resulted in a series of veterans memorials
As you walk around the interior of Stonehenge you may notice plaques with names on them. These are Klickitat County residents who died in World War I.
A stone near the center of the site has a larger plaque that reads, “To the memory of the soldiers and sailors of Klickitat County who gave their lives in defense of their country . . . in the hope that others inspired by the example of their valor and their heroism may share in that love of liberty and burn with that fire of patriotism which death alone can quench.”
More recently, a local committee developed memorials near Stonehenge honoring residents who died in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War (Becker, 2006).
Visitors interact with Stonehenge in a variety of ways. As a case in point, in the next two photos you can see a pink bouquet of flowers placed next to a plaque and a young person who has climbed to the top of one of the pillars.
What I find most interesting about Hill is that he tried in multiple ways over the course of his life to bring an urbane culture to the then-rustic Pacific Northwest. Although his road-building efforts were quite successful, his dream of creating a Quaker village was overwhelmed by the challenges of that remote location.
And as for warning future generations about the perils of war, humanity doesn’t seem to have learned that one just yet.
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RE:SOURCES
- Becker, Paula; 2006. “Altar stone of Stonehenge replica built to memorialize World War I soldiers is dedicated at Maryhill on July 4, 1918.” Historylink.org. Posted June 14.
- Maryhill Museum of Art; 2025a. “Mission and History.” Accessed May 25.
- ——; 2025b. “Stonehenge Memorial & Klickitat County Veterans Memorial.” Accessed May 25.
- Wikipedia; 2025a. “Maryhill, Washington.” Page last modified May 22.
- ——; 2025b. “Klickitat County, Washington.” Page last modified May 17.
As it is shown in a famous anime involving Titans, probably humanity cannot realise the perils of war because war is itself a part of the human condition.
Indeed besides the intellectual prowess and ingenuity, there really isn’t much of a difference between conflicts among animals or primates and among humans.
On merrier topics, there is something captivating about the inter-war period America, a giant (pun with the above paragraph unintended) that was still building its strenght and had lots of will to create things and thoughts, a force still unburdened by the role of being the “gendarme of the free world”.
When American cars began to diverge from the European counterparts in size (bigger), styling (more advanced, thanks to better stamping and glass forming technology), and amenities. When American trains had become the gem of the railroads, curvaceous locomotives heading silvery or colorful lightweight air-conditioned coaches.