We see Washington’s Roman nose first. The 21-foot schnozzle is framed by familiar, haughty patrician features, as America’s first president gazes unflinchingly eastward. Heading east on Highway 244 swings us around from behind Mount Rushmore so that, one-by-one, the presidents demurely reveal themselves, like children from behind a parent’s legs. Before leaving the highway, all four commanders-in-chief crowd together in one corner of the granite outcrop, as if huddled together for warmth.
A national memorial, Mount Rushmore draws some three million visitors a year, of which we are but two. It’s free to visit, if you don’t count the parking fee. I tip my hat to the National Park Service’s ingenuity; boasting of free admission but still making you pay—what could be more American than that?
Strolling through a colonnade bearing the inscription Mount Rushmore National Memorial, we make our way down a promenade, through a second pillared arcade and into the Avenue of Flags. The POTUS (POTUSes?POTUSi?) tower high above twin rows of flags, representing the country’s 50 states, three territories, two commonwealths and one district. How many here today, I ask myself, can name all 56?
Moving on, we arrive at the Grand View Terrace which, as the name implies, is the main viewing area for the memorial. It abuts onto the back of an amphitheatre which fills with tourists for the lighting ceremony each evening. The four colossi stare serenely beyond us at the horizon, like gods blissfully unaware of the scurrying ants at their feet.
Deification is the order of the day; for if we are not in a shrine, I’m very much mistaken. Behold the icons rising out of the very land they’ve blessed. Bear witness to the tracts proclaiming their greatness. Listen to the sermons exhorting the miracles they wrought. It’s full on hagiography.
Down a path to the right of the Grand View Terrace is the Borglum Terrace—named for the memorial’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. Beyond that lies the Sculptor Studio. Erected in 1939 as an on-site studio for Borglum, it now displays plaster models of his designs and the tools used to shape the carvings. It’s here visitors discover that the sculpture we know so well is not the one Borglum envisioned. A 1:12 model of his original final concept reveals that the four presidents were to be carved down to their waists.
There are more surprises; the favoured layout—Borglum designed eight over the years—saw Jefferson situated over Washington’s right shoulder. Indeed, Borglum even began hewing the third president’s features into the mountain on that side only to discover that the area was loaded with quartz, a mineral not conducive to carving. After 18 frustrating months, Borglum admitted defeat and amended his design, moving Jefferson to Washington’s left. Borglum’s crew blasted off the work they had done; very few people looking at the memorial today are aware of Jefferson’s restlessness.
More revelations abound. Borglum intended a 500-word history of the United States he called the Entablature to be inscribed next to the figures. 80-by-120 feet and carved in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase, it would contain the nine most significant historical events to occur between the pronouncement of the Declaration of Independence and the end of Roosevelt’s presidency (the country’s first 133 years). However, cracked granite, dwindling funds, the loss of space due to Jefferson’s shifting and the question of legibility from a distance scuppered his plans.
Another discovery is the existence of a passageway behind Lincoln’s head. After the disappointment of the Entablature, Borglum shifted gears and began work on a Hall of Records which would archive the country’s most important documents and artifacts, including the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
The grand room was to be 100-by-80 feet, its walls covered in mosaics; busts of famous Americans and inscriptions of achievements by the U.S. in the fields of science, industry and the arts would populate the space. Over the door to the chamber, a bronze eagle with a 38-foot wingspan would serve as a tireless sentinel.
The Hall of Records would be accessed by climbing an 800-foot granite stairway from where Borglum’s studio stands. Beginning in July 1939, a rough 70-foot passage was blasted into the mountain before progress ceased a year later when Congress mandated that construction should continue on the faces only.
The Presidential Trail is a mile-long walkway running from the Sculptor Studio parallel with the mountain to the far side of the Grand View Terrace. It offers the closest views and some unique perspectives of the three-story high figures—at points you are practically under their noses. If the granite figures were capable of sneezing, those below would be showered in an avalanche of dust and pebbles
At the end of the trail is Lakota Nakota Dakota Heritage Village—Lakota, Nakota and Dakota being the three dialects of the Sioux language. Visitors have the opportunity to learn some of the customs and traditions of the tribes who have lived in the Black Hills for millennia.
When it comes to the history of Mount Rushmore, most of us are missing the full story—the one that includes Native Americans. Pamphlets, books and videos available on site—and even on the National Park Service’s websites—present sanitized versions of the history of Mount Rushmore, tending to start with Gutzon Borglum’s arrival in 1924. But the story goes back much further.
Native American tribes have called the Great Plains home for thousands of years. After encroachment and conflict between European settlers and the native peoples, the U.S. government ratified the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, ceding parts of what would one day become North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana to the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations for their “undisturbed use and occupation” in perpetuity. After failing to uphold that treaty, a second Treaty of Fort Laramie is signed in 1868—again, in perpetuity.
By 1874, with the discovery of gold in South Dakota’s Black Hills—land belonging to the Sioux—the government once more refuses to enforce the treaty, failing to prevent miners and settlers from claiming tribal land. In 1877, disregarding the treaty altogether, the U.S. government unilaterally seizes the Black Hills (Pahá Sápa in Lakota) and forces the Sioux on to reservations.
Let’s jump ahead to 1923. It’s 34 years since South Dakota entered the Union. The federal government has seized Sioux land on two further occasions (1889 and 1910). The mass production of automobiles and building of highways has opened up America. More and more people are exploring the country, drawn by wonders such as not-too-distant Yellowstone Park. South Dakota State Historian Doane Robinson is trying to think of a way to lure some of these tourists to his off-the-grid state when he spies an article on a sculptor carving the world’s largest bas-relief into the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia. That sculptor is Gutzlon Borglum.
Robinson isn’t put off by the fact that the Stone Mountain carving is an homage to the Confederacy—it features Confederate president Jefferson Davis and generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. If Robinson knows about Borglum’s involvement in the Klu Klux Klan or his history of anti-semitism, it doesn’t prevent him from inviting the sculptor to South Dakota in 1924 to discuss a potential project.
Robinson’s idea is to carve figures of heroes of the American West into the soaring granite spires known as “The Needles” through which a new highway is being built. He suggests Lt. Col. George Custer, “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Lewis and Clark, as well as great Native American leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sacagawea and Red Cloud. Borglum reels off a litany of problems with the suggestion—too many cracks in the granite, the rock is too weathered and thin, it’s too difficult to carve into freestanding spindles.
The following year, after being fired from the Stone Mountain job, Borglum returns to South Dakota and spots the ideal site for a majestic carving—a 450-foot-high, southeast-facing mountain with an unencumbered view and maximum exposure to sunlight. The mountain is sacred to the Lakota, who know it by several names, including The Six Grandfathers (Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe)—for the six sacred directions: west, east, north, south, above, below; representing love and kindness, full of years and wisdom, like human grandfathers—and Cougar Mountain (Igmútȟaŋka Pahá). Settlers, gradually come to call it Mount Rushmore, after affluent New York attorney Charles Rushmore who assessed mining claims in the area in the 1880s.
“I want to create a monument so inspiring that people from all over America will be drawn to come and look and go home better citizens,” Borglum tells Robinson. To achieve this he convinces Robinson to think on a grander level—presidents rather than local, Western figures. Mount Rushmore, Borglum says, is the perfect canvas. “America will march along that skyline,” he proclaims.
But which presidents?
Borglum recommends four figures—former chief executives who represent the foundation, preservation and expansion of the United States: George Washington for his essential role in the creation of the nation; Thomas Jefferson who, with the Louisiana Purchase, was responsible for the greatest expansion of the country; Abraham Lincoln for preserving the union throughout the Civil War; and Theodore Roosevelt for guiding America into a new century of economic development and prosperity.
George Washington 
Thomas Jefferson 
Abraham Lincoln
Today, we are so inured to the figures that we assume there was ready agreement about the choices. Not so. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln had much support but Roosevelt was a controversial choice. Teddy Roosevelt had passed away a mere six years earlier but much of the rancour and enmity he had created was alive and well. Not only were many Democrats opposed to his inclusion, but there was deep resentment within the Republican party for Roosevelt’s splitting the vote in the 1912 election—running as a third party candidate for the Progressive party, thereby allowing Woodrow Wilson and the Dems to win the election.
Wilson was suggested for the fourth spot, for leading the country through the Great War. But Borglum championed Roosevelt whom, beside being a personal friend, he had campaigned for in the 1912 election. Roosevelt, Borglum insisted, was the natural choice for his conservation efforts (he established the US Forest Service, 5 National Parks, 18 National Monuments, 150 National Forests and scores of bird and game preserves) as well as building the Panama Canal. Eventually, Roosevelt’s inclusion was ratified and President Calvin Coolidge and Congress approved the project on March 3, 1925.
Native Americans, for whom the mountain (and all the Black Hills) was (and remains) hallowed ground, had an entirely different perspective on the project. They viewed the carving as an assault upon sacred land and the white men to be enshrined upon it as the principle perpetrators of all the suffering, injustice and broken promises they had endured. In addition to being a slave owner, George Washington had called for the “the total destruction and devastation” of native settlements in upstate New York. He was known as the “Town Destroyer” amongst the Iroquois. Thomas Jefferson, also a slave owner, laid the ground work for aggressively acquiring indigenous land.
Washington – “The Town Destroyer” 
Jefferson – Assimilation or Removal
On the same day the Civil War ended, Abraham Lincoln ordered the hanging of 38 Dakota Indians in Minnesota—the largest mass execution in American history. Honest Abe was also responsible for two notable Acts which swiped land from the native people. The Homestead Act (1862) allowed Western settlers to indiscriminately claim 60 acres of land; Indians were, notably, excluded from receiving land. And it’s no surprise to discover that settlers disregarded whether or not they were claiming land on which natives lived for millennia. The Pacific Railway Act (also 1862) revoked land and disrupted the traditional way of indigenous life by authorizing land grants to railway companies to build a transcontinental railway.
Theodore Roosevelt was well known for his hostility toward indigenous Americans, most famously for an 1886 speech in which he said “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” As a supporter of the General Allotment Act, pushing for Indian land to be divided up to be owned (and sold) as private property, Roosevelt deemed it “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass” and force assimilation upon Native Americans. Even those who praise Roosevelt for his fervid expansion of the National Park System recognize the fact that he seized 230 million acres of land—much of it belonging to local tribes—to place it under the administration and protection of the national parks service.
Carving began in earnest on October 4, 1927. Borglum knew from his time on Stone Mountain that chisels would be insufficient for such an immense undertaking. The crew spent three weeks pounding away at the face of the mountain with jackhammers to little progress before Borglum called a halt. While working on Stone Mountain, a visiting Belgian engineer instructed Borglum in the use of dynamite for precision work. This, he realized was the only way he would be able to remove 450,000 tons of granite from the face of the mountain.
Blasting begins (1927)
Borglum taught his team how to drill deep holes into the granite. An explosives expert (aka “powder monkey”) would pack each hole with explosives and sand. Blasting took place during lunch break or the end of the day, when all the crew were safely off the mountain. Now Borglum and his team were able to sheer off large amounts of granite, arriving within mere inches of what would be the figures’ final features.
Powder Monkey 
Some grassroots movements seeking to add a fifth head to the project gained traction—a bill supporting women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony for inclusion went before Congress. Borglum, however, opposed deviating from his vision and Congress, reeling from the Great Depression and wary of war clouds over Europe, was reluctant to sink more funds into the carving.
Borglum, in fact, was on his way to lobby Congress for more funding when he died in Chicago after emergency surgery on March 6, 1941. After his father’s death, Lincoln Borglum used the remaining $50,000 to put finishing touches on the faces and make the site presentable before declaring the project completed October 31, 1941.
All in all, the Mount Rushmore National Monument would take 14 years to complete, occupy the labour of 400 men and cost one million dollars—85% paid by the government.
Mount Rushmore stands as a testament to many things—the ingenuity of engineering; the artistic abilities of the carvers; the vision of the sculptor; the honouring of America and four of it’s most highly respected leaders; the betrayal, sequestration and destruction of Native Americans.
Some gaze upon it admiringly and speak of the resourcefulness of man imposing his will upon nature; of the permanence of the carving being a metaphor for durability of American ideals. But nothing last forever, as the native people discovered to their detriment with the arrival of Europeans. For what is immutability in the face of eternity?
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Next: Crazy Horse Monument
The Sonic Horizon 