Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Caption: Marker detail: Early Preservation Efforts
Additional Description: As early as the 1920s, park managers have been concerned with protecting inscriptions from the elements of nature. Early efforts shown below included covering the carvings with paraffin (top left), chiseling grooves to reroute water flows (top right), and darkening inscriptions with hard pencils (lower) to offset the erosion that was occurring.

These first, well intended though intrusive, attempts to preserve the inscriptions ended in the 1930s, though you will see remnants of darkening in some of the Spanish carvings. Erosion and weathering pose the ultimate challenge to the National Park Service mission of preserving inscriptions in perpetuity while allowing natural processes to occur.
Submitted: December 24, 2020, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Database Locator Identification Number: p559077
File Size: 1.020 Megabytes

To see the metadata that may be embedded in this photo, sign in and then return to this page.