Mount Rushmore

HISTORY

Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota was not named until 1885 when a New York attorney, Charles E Rushmore was surveying the mountain range on horseback with a guide. When asked the mountain's name the guide replied it never had a name, but from now on we'll call it Rushmore. The name stuck.

South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the area.

Mount Rushmore By Jonathunder 

Robinson enlisted Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum to create the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution. Borglum had studied art in Paris when a youth with sculptor Auguste Rodin.

It was Borglum’s idea to honor the four presidents. He selected Mount Rushmore as the the rock of the mountain is composed of smooth, fine-grained granite. Also, because it faces the southeast, the workers had the advantage of sunlight for most of the day.

Gutzon Borglum and his team began work on the face of Mount Rushmore on October 4, 1927.

Most of the crew that worked on Mount Rushmore were miners who had come to the Black Hills in search of gold.

Over 90% of Mount Rushmore was carved using dynamite, removing over 450,000 tons of rock from the mountain. After all that blasting, the sculpture was finely carved to create a smooth surface.

Construction of the Mount Rushmore monument

Upon Gutzon Borglum's death in March 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum took over as leader of the construction project.

The carving of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore was completed on October 31, 1941 after 14 years of construction by Gutzon Borglum and 400 stone masons. It’s estimated that the actual carving only took six years. The project was delayed a total of about eight years due to weather and lack of funding.

The total cost of the project was $989,992.32, and 85 percent of that cost was funded by Congress.

Despite the dangerous nature of the job, none of the crew died during construction.

THE PRESIDENTS

Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents. It was originally supposed to include not just the heads but the torsos of the presidents, as well

Gutzon Borglum selected each president. George Washington was chosen because he was the "Father of the Nation", Abraham Lincoln, "Preserver of the Union", Thomas Jefferson, "The Expansionist", and Theodore Roosevelt "Protector of the Working Man".

Distant view of Mount Rushmore. By Grahampurse -

The presidents’ faces are each scaled to men who would stand 465 feet tall.

There's a hidden room behind Lincoln's hairline at Mount Rushmore. Borglum wanted it to be his own special signature on the monument, a room where visitors could learn about American history and a place to display busts of famous Americans and key documents like the Constitution.

Sources Parade,  The National Park Service website, Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things