504 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Very soon after the appropriation of 1876 became available, Colonel (then 

 lieutenant colonel) Thomas Lincoln Casey, corps of engineers, U. S. A., was 

 designated by President Grant, through Secretary of War McCrary, as the engineer 

 officer to conduct the work, and Captain George W. Davis, 14th U. S. infantry, 

 was ordered here from Texas and placed on special duty as an acting engineer 

 officer, as assistant for the monument construction. 



The first work done was in 1877, when shafts were sunk at different points 

 about the monolith and borings made to find the character of the strata below the 

 foundation. It had already been ascertained that the original foundation extended 

 only five feet below the surrounding earth surface, while fourteen feet reached 

 above to the floor of the shaft. The examinations showed that below the old 

 foundation was a series of layers of yellow and blue clay on a rock strata, sloping 

 away to the original bed of the adjoining Potomac, and that these beds of clay 

 were thickly strewn with huge boulders of the ice-period. The clay taken out 

 was tested for compressibility, but the examinations and tests showed that, to 

 sustain the huge structure of over 81,000 tons, the foundation should rest upon 

 the bedrock, still fifteen feet below. These examinations and the studies of the 

 subject made by Captain Davis continued until 1878, when finally the plan of 

 building a new foundation beneath the old one was decided upon, to the aston- 

 ishment of engineers all over the civihzed world. How such a thing could be 

 done was the wonder until Colonel Casey and Captain Davis practically demon- 

 strated it by accomplishing the fact. 



The old foundation was so ridiculously shallow and narrow in base that the 

 addition of the weight necessary to carry out the design of height would have 

 sunk the structure into the ground, much like thrusting a cane into moist earth, 

 or, more likely, have toppled it over toward the adjacent Potomac flats. A new 

 and wide foundation was built under the old one and resting on the bedrock 

 beneath. The magnitude of this before unheard-of feat of engineering was so 

 great that home and foreign civil engineers visited the work to see for themselves 

 that it was actually being done. The complete work of the sub-foundation is one 

 of the greatest feats of engineering known in the world. 



Meantime, while the foundation examination had progressed, means had 

 been found to reach and examine the top which was left unfinished before 

 Congress took action. The three upper courses of stone, each one two feet high, 

 were found to be so damaged by the action of frost, and perhaps lightning, that 

 they were removed before the work on top was resumed at the exact height of 

 150 feet. 



September 11, 1878, an inspector of the proposed work and Mr. P. H. 

 McLaughlin reported at the monument grounds, and were followed next day by 

 a small gang of carpenters, of which Mr. McLaughlin was then the foreman, who 

 began the erection of the necessary buildings. The first superintendent, who 

 reported in the same month, was Mr. Navarre, and on his resignation in 18 7 9 

 Mr. McLaughlin was promoted from master carpenter to succeed him. 



