Monument
A reproduction of the pyramids that marked the baseline for measurement at Yaruqui (which was destroyed by Quito authorities in the 1740s) was erected in 1836, the centennial of the expedition, by the Rocafuerte administration of the nascent republic of Ecuador. This monument fell into disrepair over the next century but was rebuilt in 1936, minus its original French inscription, for the bicentennial of the first geodesic expedition along with a second pyramid at San Antonio de Pichincha on the equator. These monuments still exist today. The new Quito international airport will open in the Yaruqui valley in 2011 and will include a mural celebrating the Geodesic Mission.
In 1936, the French American Committee of Ecuador sponsored the idea of the Ecuadoran geographer Dr. Luis Tufiño and raised a monument commemorating the bicentennial of the arrival of the First Geodesic Mission. They raised a 10-meter-high monument at Mitad del Mundo in San Antonio de Pichincha, in Pichincha Province of Ecuador. However, there is no record that the Mission ever visited the area. Moreover, the monument bears a suspicious resemblance to a fictitious pyramid in Frederic Edwin Church's painting "Cayambe" rather than to any actual Ecuadorian site.
Read more about this topic: French Geodesic Mission
Famous quotes containing the word monument:
“The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city’s throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)