Building Peace Ep. 9: An Honest Map, Worth the Effort

Dear Supporters,



A couple of months ago, I told you about the puzzle of pavers that will form the world map at the center of Peace Corps Park. This week, the file that turns that puzzle into detailed specs was finalized at Quarra: a 3-gigabyte, high-resolution rendering of the exact contours of every paver (a total 286 pieces of stone), laid out and cleared for carving.

“We had said we wanted to make the most accurate map possible,” Larry Kirkland, our lead designer, said, “and we were flabbergasted with what we got back from Quarra.”

The first cuts have been made, with fabrication of the simplest of the 228 textured pavers getting underway last month, but the more complex pieces of this puzzle represent a much more significant challenge, some needing multiple techniques to fulfill their role in the greater whole. 

The dark, polished Virginia Mist granite will represent the landforms, with oceans made real by a texture that will show up in a lighter grey; pavers with larger segments of the landforms will be sandblasted to create a pattern of interconnected lines symbolizing the connections among all peoples that remains a core value of the Peace Corps experience and a core symbolic function of this element of the Park.

On the more functional side, every paver needs to be graded – carved with a slight pitch – so that rainwater finds its way to the edges instead of pooling. That means a lot of rock needs to be removed from the top of each paver (as they will all have flat bottoms), and the hard granite wears through drill bits more quickly than a softer stone would.



With the depths and techniques now defined for each paver and Quarra’s three suitably precise machines working in parallel, that means creating this world in stone will take many months of continuous cutting.

It's an apt time to be thinking about maps, too: The UN General Assembly just voted to move institutions away from the five-century-old Mercator projection — the one that quietly shrinks Africa and inflates everything near the poles — toward one that shows the continent closer to its true size. It’s a different projection than ours (the Peirce quincuncial, for the cartophiles in the audience), but it follows the same principle: draw the world honestly. No matter if that means more work. 

And that honesty runs in both directions on this map. The smallest countries represented at this scale, mostly in the South Pacific and Caribbean (and most of which have hosted Peace Corps Volunteers), will take barely a few square inches of granite. Small on the map because they're small on Earth, and increasingly vulnerable for the same reason: some are only a few feet of elevation above a rising ocean.

A map like this tells the truth about the small countries as it does with the largest continents, and reminds us how fragile it all is. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we partner with the most vulnerable communities in the most vulnerable countries, and they continue to request the partnership of the Peace Corps today.

We have a chance to honor all of those partners by carving them into stone in Washington, D.C. as a permanent tribute to the planet that is home to us all. 

I invite you all to help us fulfill our mission by making it your own with a contribution to Peace Corps Park, a symbol that will ensure future generations are motivated by the values we all share.

Yours in service,

Glenn A. Blumhorst
Chief Advancement Officer
Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation

President and CEO, National Peace Corps Association (2013-22)
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Guatemala (1988-91)

GBlumhorst@PeaceCorpsCommemorative.org

The Peace Corps Park team will be visiting our fabrication partner Quarra Stone Co. outside of Madison, Wis. on Thursday, October 8, 2026. If you are in the area – or are just interested in seeing how one of the world’s most advanced stone carving workshops operates in person, we are happy to invite members of our community to join us.

Register at this link (required)

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PEACE CORPS COMMEMORATIVE FOUNDATION

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The Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation is the trade name of the Peace Corps Foundation,
a District of Columbia 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
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