A stress‐freezing technique is used to observe the stress distribution inside a cylindrical body produced by a coaxially loaded cylindrical punch. The flat end of the punch is pressed against the top surface of a vertical cylinder. After the stress is frozen in, a thin vertical diametric slice is prepared for photoelastic observation. The stress distribution is compared with theoretical results calculated for a semi‐infinite body using the following two boundary conditions: uniform displacement of the punch and uniform pressure under the punch. The agreement is good at long distances (three times the punch radius) with either boundary condition. At short distances, the observed stress distribution is in between but close to the uniform displacement boundary condition. These results support the use of mixed stress distributions under the punch in a previous finite‐element calculation of impressing creep velocities.