This July 8 marks the 85th anniversary of the dedication of the large sculpture in East Muskingum Park by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Popularly known as the “Start Westward Monument,” but officially named the “Memorial to the Start Westward of the United States,” the monument was in many respects the climax of the sesquicentennial celebrations of the founding of the Northwest Territory spanning the years 1937-38.

Adding to the special nature of this project was the participation of a world-famous sculptor. Gutzon Borglum was already at work on his mammoth project at Mount Rushmore, and had other obligations at locations as far away as France. He was persuaded to design a sculpture for the Northwest Territory monument for a “nominal fee” of $15,000 by his friend George White, former governor of Ohio and a Marietta resident.

Borglum prepared a full-scale plaster model of the monument in his Texas studio; then a smaller clay version was brought to Marietta early in 1937 for evaluation by the Northwest Territory Commission. The final composition depicts three men in colonial garb, looking into the new territory of the Northwest, above two shirtless figures unloading a small boat, and a figure above these variously described as a pioneer woman or an Indian guide.

There is evidence that Borglum wanted to cast the monument in bronze, a durable material, but was convinced to use local sandstone even though there were doubts about its permanence (a concern supported by the eroded nature of the statue today). Use of the local stone, however, permitted the hiring of stoneworkers with skills honed in the nearby quarries, using funding from the federal Works Progress Administration. By February 1938 a single block of sandstone weighing 80 tons, said to be “the largest ever quarried in southern Ohio,” was extracted ten miles distant from Marietta near Constitution, and placed at a “quarry-studio” at Briggs Station for most of the preliminary shaping.

While Gutzon Borglum had been hired to design the sculptural model and supervise its transfer to stone, he did not personally carve most of the final work, just as the sculptural efforts at Mount Rushmore, still on-going to this day long after Borglum’s death, have been carried out by many worker-artisans. This reflects the “workshop” system of monumental production that involves the work of multiple artisans under the direction of the artist manager.

The massive sandstone block at Briggs Station was reduced by almost two-thirds before transport to the East Muskingum Park site for final shaping. Based on Borglum’s clay model, the stone-workers used a “pointing” system to rough out the preliminary forms on the stone. This method uses pointing needles and rods to transfer forms on the model to the stone block, providing a means for skilled labor to complete most of the material reduction before the master sculptor creates the final surface finishes.

In June 1938 the arduous delivery of the reduced sandstone block from Briggs Station to East Muskingum Park was undertaken, after summer weather had dried and stabilized the dirt and gravel roads. The unfinished sculpture was then moved on steel rollers from Front Street to its final location in the park. Here the next few busy weeks would be spent by the workmen, and finally Borglum himself, creating the finished work of art, while thousands of people came by to marvel at the artistic creation.

Wesley Clarke is a WCHS member. To learn more about the Washington County Historical Society services and membership call 740-373-1788 or visit wchshistory.org.