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Stuart Joynt of Lost Art Stone Masonry did the work on the monument. Gone is the green mold and chipped places on the monument. And according to Joynt the monument will continue to whiten as the weeks go by.
The monument is above the spring that was the available water source for those living in the station in 1782. When Indians surrounded the fort in August of 1782 the settlers inside the fort were cut off from the water source. As Donna Jones explained to the crowd in her keynote address livestock was kept inside the station at night for their safety. Any spring inside of the station would have had the water tainted by the animal waste.
Each day the women of the fort made their way outside the walls with gourds and buckets to bring in water for the day.
On the day of the pending attack the settlers decided that the women should go to the spring as usual. Disrupting their daily routine or sending the men to the spring would have been a tip off to the hundreds of Indians hidden outside the walls that the settlers were aware of there presence.
So with much trepidation, the women of the fort boldly made the trip to the spring. Amazingly they gathered their pails and gourds of water and returned to the fort unharmed.
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