The Park Ranger's Tale

During the visit to the Jefferson Memorial I did manage to retain a little of a thread of the story (I hope). The ranger started off talking about how Thomas Jefferson and George Washington met as young men. It seems they were both hired to travel into the highland wilderness of the Blue Mountains to look after George Mason's sheep for a summer. While on the mountain a love developed between the men that...no wait, that was Brokeback Mount Vernon...

Oh yeah, his tale started with George Mason finding out that Tom Jefferson was his illegitimate son while the old fellow was undergoing a sexual transformation and they traveled across together on a journey of self discovery across the western frontier...no wait, that was Trans Allegheny...

OK, Mr Ranger's tale began at the time of the conception of the US capital when Thomas Jefferson hired Pierre L'Enfant, a Frenchman who had served with George Washington in the War for Independence, to design the capital. Apparently, at that time the current location of the Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments was a swamp. The Tidal Basin was just a shallow water bend in the shore of the Potomac that was infested with mosquitos.

When they finished building the President's Mansion (the White House which wasn't white then) and the Capitol building then they decided to start on the Washington Monument. The chosen site was the center of the District of Columbia and on an axis between Mount Vernon and the President's Mansion. They originally intended the Monument to be an equestrian statue of Washington. Then someone came up with the idea to make it look like the Pantheon in Rome with the busts of all the future Presidents arranged around George's in the center (which I think would have been pretty cool - especially if they stopped the tradition sometime in the 60's). However, at some point they found that the site was too close to the river to allow such a large foundation to be built. Therefore they changed to the obilisk shape. The funding for the structure ran out and then it had to come from public donations. Donations were solicited from each US citizen but donations were limited by Congress to $1 maximum from each person.

Needless to say, that's not a very effective way to do fundraising - by setting a maximum on donations. So, the structure wasn't finished until after the Civil War. Then, it was decided to construct a memorial to Lincoln. The Potomac was being dredged to improve the navigability of the river and the material was piled up to form the Tidal Basin. The Tidal Basin is pretty cool, it's designed to flush out the water with the tide, thus removing the mosquito problem.

After the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial were completed then they felt they needed to have a third presidential monument to complete the set: Egyptian, Greek and Roman - recognition for the contribution of the classical civilizations upon which the American experiment was based. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the one that approved the choice of Jefferson, during WWII.

The Jefferson Memorial was originally built out of plaster because bronze was a bit scarce during the war. It was later cast in bronze. So, now you can all read the real story and get the real facts instead of this history as I remember hearing it.