Is the Lincoln Memorial made of Georgia marble? What Pickens County stone really went to Washington

Partly. The National Park Service says the statue of Abraham Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial was carved from Georgia marble. The building around him is another matter: its outside facade and upper steps are Colorado marble. That difference tends to get lost in the retelling around Jasper, Georgia, so this is a source-by-source check of what stone from the marble country really went to Washington, and which of the bigger claims hold up.

The Lincoln statue: yes, and the Park Service says so

The National Park Service credits the carving to the Piccirilli brothers. In the Park Service’s words, the brothers, in their New York studio, “transformed 28 blocks of white Georgia marble into intricately carved pieces that French himself perfected.”

The same page says where the rest of the memorial came from: “The granite at the terrace level came from Massachusetts, the marble of the upper steps and outside façade came from Colorado, while the pink marble floor of the chamber came from Tennessee.” So the man in the chair is Georgia. The building is mostly somewhere else.

That photo was taken in Washington, not Pickens County. It shows the one part of the memorial the Park Service credits to Georgia.

One more honest note. The Park Service passage we checked says “white Georgia marble” and stops there. The link to Pickens County comes from the Georgia Historical Society marker in Tate, which says Georgia Marble Company stone “can be found in monuments and public buildings around the world, including the Lincoln Memorial.” Read side by side, the fair version is this: the statue is Georgia marble, and the state’s historical marker credits the Georgia Marble Company.

The U.S. Capitol: corridors on the record, columns on a marker

The Architect of the Capitol says “Georgia marble clads the East Front connecting corridors.” That is the cleanest primary-source line we found about the Capitol, and it is narrower than what you may hear on the courthouse square.

The historical marker goes further. It lists “the twenty-four columns on the east front of the U.S. Capitol.” The Chamber’s VisitPickensGA.com goes further still, saying Georgia marble columns replaced the Capitol’s original sandstone columns and had to match the originals within one-tenth of an inch (Visit Pickens). We could not confirm the column count or that tolerance on the Architect of the Capitol’s marble page, which talks about the corridors. Treat both as claims made by state and local sources, not settled fact.

The 60 percent line

You will hear that most of the monuments in Washington are Georgia marble. The New Georgia Encyclopedia article on Pickens County handles it carefully: marble from the county went into major public buildings across the country “and, reportedly, in 60 percent of the monuments in Washington, D.C.” The encyclopedia’s own word there is “reportedly.” None of the sources we read shows the count behind the number. It is a figure people repeat, and we would not carve it on a plaque.

What else is on the record

The encyclopedia’s Marble article names one more Washington building. During the marble boom of the 1930s, Georgia marble went into the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, along with the Puerto Rican capitol, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and Public Library in Ohio. Closer to home, native marble was used on the Georgia State Capitol, Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta and several Emory University buildings.

The scorecard

Where the stone comes from

Georgia marble is a metamorphosed limestone quarried near Tate in Pickens County, per the encyclopedia. The Chamber says the vein under the county runs 5 to 7 miles long, nearly half a mile wide and up to 2,000 feet deep. The industry took off after the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad reached the county by 1883, and the Tate family created the Georgia Marble Company in 1884. Our Georgia marble history page tells the long version, and the company village itself is in our piece on Tate, the company town.

See the stone without driving to Washington

The Georgia Marble Museum shares space with the Pickens County Visitor Center at 500 Veterans Memorial Blvd in Jasper, with exhibits tying local marble to landmarks around the country. The Chamber lists its hours as Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.; its tourism site’s footer says 9 to 4, so call (706) 692-5600 before a trip. The Georgia Historical Society marker stands in Tate Cemetery on GA 53, and our Tate marble trail strings it together with the other stops.

If you want to stand at the edge of the source, the public gets one chance a year: the Chamber’s guided quarry tours during the Georgia Marble Festival. Dates for 2027 have not been announced.

Questions people ask

Written by the Jasper Marble Festival Guide Editorial Team. AI tools help us draft; people check every fact before it publishes.