Image: Banks-Obelisk

Description: This photo, taken in August, 2010, shows what appears to be an obelisk monument, atop the present-day earthen cover to the west of Btty Kellogg, Pit B (and between that pit and Btty Lincoln Pit B). In fact, this structure is a ventilation shaft, or chimney, which connects to the underground galleries. Its underground end comes out in the ceiling of the northern end of the central north-south gallery that was one of the original (1896) magazines serving the mortar batteries. When it was constructed, this shaft showed only about 6 inches of its tip above ground. This indicates that about 10 to 20 feet of earthen cover, which originally protected the magazines from enemy shell fire, has been scraped away from the top of the battery complex, during the redevelopment of the site for apartments and municipal uses. Thomas Vaughan (principal site historian) reports that local sources claim there was once a geodetic benchmark (or survey disk) at the peak of this monument, but this mark does not appear in present-day geodetic databases, and is unconfirmed.
Title: Banks-Obelisk
Credit: Own work
Author: Pgrig (talk) (Uploads)
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Attribution Required?: Yes