Mount Rushmore

MOUNT RUSHMORE

MOUNT RUSHMORE is the world's largest sculpture and foremost mountain carving. Located about twenty-five miles southwest of Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Black Hills National Forest, the memorial commemorates the foundation, preservation, and expansion of the United States and features the faces of four of the nation's most famous presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Each of the sculpted faces is over sixty feet high. Carved out of a granite cliff atop the 5,725-foot-high mountain, the memorial is visible from miles away.

In 1923 the South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson initially proposed a memorial of giant sculptures in the Black Hills as a way to commemorate heroes of the old West, like the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the Sioux Indian leader Red Cloud. Robinson understood that, in the era of the beginnings of widespread automobile ownership and the development of a vacation industry in America, such a monument would attract tourists and bring extra revenue to the region. He contacted the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was then famous for his work on a Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain in Georgia. Borglum traveled to South Dakota in 1924 and endorsed the project but introduced

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a fundamental change in its scope. Rather than a western memorial of regional interest, the fiercely patriotic Borglum envisioned a memorial national in character that would appeal to all Americans. In fact, Borglum suggested the memorial feature carvings of the four presidents. After surveying the Black Hills for a suitable cliff in 1925, Borglum chose Mount Rushmore, and carving began in 1927.

Fourteen years later, in October 1941, work at Mount Rushmore finally came to an end, though less than half that time was actually spent on carving and sculpting the monument. Lack of money for the project was a constant problem, which often shut down operations for whole seasons at a time. The fact that Mount Rushmore was meant as a national memorial did help, however. South Dakota senator Peter Norbeck and Borglum himself often successfully lobbied Congress for funds, even during the Great Depression. Of the nearly $1 million total cost of carving Mount Rushmore, more than $800,000 came from federal sources.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt placed the project under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, which continued to administer the memorial. "The Shrine to Democracy," as Mount Rushmore National Memorial is often called, is visited by more than 2.6 million sightseers annually, fulfilling both Robinson's dream of a historical tourist attraction in the Black Hills and Borglum's vision of a lasting monument to America's majesty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Price, Willadene. Gutzon Borglum, Artist and Patriot. Chicago: Rand, 1961.

Smith, Rex Alan. The Carving of Mount Rushmore. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985.

Noah Gelfand

See also Art: Sculpture ; National Park System .