On April tenth Governor Frank D. Jackson appointed as members of the commission Hon. J. F. Duncombe and ex-Governor C. C. Carpenter of Fort Dodge, Mrs. Abbie Gardner Sharp of Okoboji, Hon. R. A. Smith of Spirit Lake, and Charles Aldrich of Des Moines. Within a short time the commission met at Fort Dodge and later at the Gardner cabin on Lake Okoboji. The commission effected an organization by selecting ex-Governor Carpenter as chairman and Mrs. Sharp as secretary. They quickly decided on the selection of the lot adjacent to and south of the Gardner cabin. This site was immediately presented to the State by its owners, the Okoboji South Beach Company. On June 20, 1894, the P. N. Peterson Granite Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, was awarded the contract for the erection of the memorial. The specifications provided that the monument should be “a shaft 55 feet high above the foundation, in alternate blocks of rough and polished Minnesota granite, with a die 6 × 6 feet, upon which should be placed four bronze tablets--for the sum of $4,500. The inscriptions placed upon the tablets may be described as follows: On the east, the list of murdered settlers; on the west, a complete roster of the relief expedition commanded by Major William Williams; on the south, historical memoranda relating to the loss of Capt. J. C. Johnson and Private W. E. Burkholder, the list of settlers who escaped from Springfield (now Jackson), Minn., etc.; and on the north, the coat of arms of Iowa, with these words: ‘Erected by order of the 25th General Assembly of the State of Iowa.’”[355] So diligently did the contracting company apply itself in the erection of the memorial that early in March, 1895, four months before the expiration of its contract, the monument was ready for inspection. On March 14, 1895, the commission met at Okoboji and inspected and accepted the work. Upon July twenty-eighth over five thousand people came by wagon and excursion train, from a radius of over fifty miles, to witness the formal dedication of the memorial and its presentation to the State. The gathering was significant in that it marked the opening of a new era in the appropriate marking of historic sites not only in Iowa but in the Middle West. In the words of the Hon. R. A. Smith, it was “meet and fitting that to the pioneer the same as the soldier should be accorded the meed of praise and recognition ... a just, though long delayed, tribute to the memory of the brave and hardy, though unpretentious and unpretending, band of settlers who sacrificed their lives in their attempts to build them homes on this then far away northwestern frontier.”[356]