borglum6
To Finish Lee's Head by Lee's Next
Birthday
Around the painted outlines the granite is being removed so as to leave the figures standing
forth in projection from the precipice. Since June 18, when this work was started, progress has
been rapid. The granite removal is a straight quarrying job, but one of unexampled difficulties,
in that the quarrymen must take their stone out of a perpendicular precipice hundreds of feet
above the plain and an equal distance below the summit, and can not use explosives for fear of
blowing off a part or all of some figures.
So rapidly, however, has the granite removal progressed around the figure of General Lee that
Mr. Borglum expects to finish Lee's head by Lee's next birthday, January 19. Meanwhile,
gigantic hoisting machinery especially designed for placing a large force of men on the precipice
is under construction in the works of the Brown Hoisting Machinery Company, Cleveland, Ohio,
and will be donated to the Memorial, at a cost of $250,000. This machinery will make possible
the completion of the entire Panorama within six to eight years, when without such machinery it
would take five times as long.
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