Posted on 06/01/2026 7:58:28 AM PDT by PROCON
If you’ve ever been to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., you’ll know it’s a majestic site, with the 19-foot-tall Georgia white marble statue of Honest Abe overlooking the Reflecting Pool and then further off, the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol.
Something you presumably didn’t see on your visit, however, is a massive 50,000-square-foot foundation built to keep the whole thing from sinking into the swamps of D.C. It’s called the Undercroft, and it’s been a tightly held secret for decades.
In June, the Department of the Interior will invite the public to see the hidden vault, Secretary Doug Burgum announced Sunday:

For whatever reason, I always love underground sites and find them mysterious and fascinating. They’re right under our feet, and yet we have no idea they’re there. In fact, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to getting caught up more than once in episodes of the 2017 Science Channel show, “Secrets of the Underground.” Where is that Nazi gold?! I want to know.
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
It’s not Christine; Christine was a 58 Plymouth Fury.
Back in the early 80’s, I took my two sons to Washington, D.C. for a week. We were visiting the Lincoln Memorial, and I got talking to one of the Park Rangers assigned there. I told him that I had read many books about Lincoln and the assassination, and that I had found a leather bound commemorative book about the laying of the cornerstone for The Lincoln Memorial on a trip to Rhode Island. The book came from the estate of one of the people on the committee to construct the Memorial. I noticed that they had the same book on display inside the Memorial. He told me that if we were interested, they gave tours in the evening under the Memorial. We went back that evening and took the tour. At the time, we didn’t need to purchase an advanced ticket for the tour.
I took the tour in the early 80's at night with my two sons. There was no mention of a vault then. I'm wondering if they may be talking about opening the cornerstone. It was originally laid on February 12, 1915. Robert Todd Lincoln attended the ceremony. Normally when laying the cornerstone of a building, they put things from that time period in with the cornerstone.
A career, summarized in one photo.
Definitely NOT a secret. I toured this interesting piece of architectural engineering fifty years ago.
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