WASHINGTON — Excavation for the Trump-backed Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island is set to begin within the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. The roughly 250-foot granite arch — planned between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery — would take two to three years to build on an intense year-round schedule, according to the National Park Service and reporting by CBS News and the Washington Examiner.

“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery,” Burgum said in a statement carried by the Examiner.

We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln…— Secretary Doug Burgum (@SecretaryBurgum) September 3, 2026

“This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum wrote on X alongside renderings of the arch. CBS reported the design would be clad in granite and topped by three golden statues plus an observation deck. The administration has tied the project to the nation’s 250th anniversary and to older architectural concepts that once envisioned a monument at the site.

The announcement arrives while a veterans’ lawsuit challenging the arch is still pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Plaintiffs argue the administration lacks congressional approval to build the monument. On Thursday, the Justice Department filed a notice of supplemental authority citing the Supreme Court’s recent standing logic in the White House East Wing ballroom fight, the Examiner reported. DOJ lawyers argued that, as with a “desire to view” the White House, plaintiffs “cannot establish standing based on desires to view Arlington House or the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Plaintiffs’ distaste for the perceived symbolism of the proposed arch does not establish a concrete and particularized injury,” the filing said, according to the Examiner. Veterans’ counsel countered that stopping the project before groundbreaking is the proper remedy and that they sued promptly after the plan was announced.

The National Park Service has acknowledged adverse effects on monument sightlines — the arch would stand more than twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial — but still backed Memorial Circle as the historically appropriate location. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts granted final approval in May; the National Capital Planning Commission gave preliminary approval in July with requested changes. The Federal Aviation Administration is still studying airspace impacts near Reagan National Airport; an earlier FAA review found no adverse airport effect but said the structure would need red obstruction lights.

Construction would run on a roughly 20-hour-a-day, year-round pace and could finish toward the end of President Trump’s second term, NPS and CBS said. The project sits on NPS land and is one piece of a broader White House push to reshape the capital’s monumental landscape — including White House campus work, Reflecting Pool plans, and Kennedy Center changes — with concentrated executive control over a site that critics say still needs Congress. Excavation starting in weeks will test whether the courts, the FAA, or Capitol Hill slow a timeline that federal agencies have already cleared.

Sources