Nation’s Icons Get a Wash

KEYSTONE, S.D. – Nobody insinuated that four of our nation’s finest have dirty mugs, but they’re getting a nice, hot face-scrubbing anyway.
At Mount Rushmore National Monument, the four great faces carved in granite – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln – received their first-ever cleaning, courtesy of a German cleaning-equipment company.
Representatives of the Winnenden, Germany-based Alfred Kärcher & Co. GmbH KG showed up at the national monument in South Dakota’s Black Hills after the Independence Day holiday to literally hose off the faces in a four- to six-week effort, although the reason isn’t exactly cosmetic.
While it’s unclear from several news reports whether the work will brighten up the presidential fantastic four, the cleaning of sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s work should prevent the spread of a true aggravation on a stone surface: vegetation.
Kärcher’s equipment, handled by its employees and National Park Service (NPS) workers as they hang over the rock faces, will use plain hot water – no additives – to power wash the surfaces and get rid of lichen and other organic growths that may eventually emit acids and harm the stone.
Workers will take care when using pressurized water around cracks in the granite surface, although those problems are already addressed with annual silicon-sealant treatments from NPS crews.
Kärcher will pick up the expenses for the cleaning, which are estimated at more than $130,000. The company’s donated this type of work before at a number of famous sites worldwide, including the Statue of Liberty, Berlin’s Brandenburger Gate, the colonnades surrounding St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City and the Colossi of Memnon in Luxor, Egypt.