Foreword 1
The Mighty Works of Borglum 5
From the Beginning 9
The Role of the National Park Service 16
Wind Cave National Park 17
Badlands National Monument 17
Jewel Cave National Monument 17
Devils Tower National Monument 17
The Antiquity of Mount Rushmore 18
The Hall of Records and Great Stairway 20
George Washington 22
Thomas Jefferson 24
Abraham Lincoln 26
Theodore Roosevelt 28
As Great Men Saw It 30
Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills 31
_FOREWORD_
_A monument’s dimensions should be determined by the importance to
civilization of the events commemorated. We are not here trying to carve
an epic, portray a moonlight scene, or write a sonnet; neither are we
dealing with mystery or tragedy, but rather the constructive and the
dramatic moments or crises in our amazing history. We are cool-headedly,
clear-mindedly setting down a few crucial, epochal facts regarding the
accomplishments of the Old World radicals who shook the shackles of
oppression from their light feet and fled despotism to people a
continent: who built an empire and rewrote the philosophy of freedom and
compelled the world to accept its wiser, happier forms of government._
_We believe the dimensions of national heartbeats are greater than
village impulses, greater than city demands, greater than state dreams
or ambitions. Therefore, we believe a nation’s memorial should, like
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, have a serenity, a
nobility, a power that reflects the gods who inspired them and suggests
the gods they have become._
_As for sculptured mountains—_
_Civilization, even its fine arts, is, most of it, quantity-produced
stuff; education, law, government, wealth—each is enduring only as the
day. Too little of it lasts into tomorrow and tomorrow is strangely the
enemy of today, as today has already begun to forget buried yesterday.
Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor, and out of its
body builds its homes, its temples. Civilizations are ghouls. Egypt was
pulled apart by its successor; Greece was divided among the Romans; Rome
was pulled to pieces by bigotry and a bitterness much of which was
engendered in its own empire building._
_I want, somewhere in America on or near the Rockies, the backbone of
the Continent, so far removed from succeeding, selfish, coveting
civilizations, a few feet of stone that bears witness, carries the
likenesses, the dates, a word or two of the great things we accomplished
as a Nation, placed so high it won’t pay to pull down for lesser
purposes._
_Hence, let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can,
the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of
men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure
until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away._
[Illustration: _Gutzon Borglum_]
THE MIGHTY WORKS OF BORGLUM
_By_ RUPERT HUGHES
How big is great? How high is up?
In the wide and numberless fields of creative art, size is a matter of
spirit rather than of material bulk. A sonnet may be a masterpiece, and
an epic rubbish; or an epic may be sublime, a sonnet petty.
It is only affectation to confine one’s praise to small things. Because
a poet delights in a brook chuckling through a thicket of birches he
need not therefore despise Niagara. The word “colossal” should not be
surrendered entirely to the advertisers.
The Shakespeare of the sonnets wrote also “Hamlet” and “King Lear.” The
Beethoven who wrote the giggling _Scherzos_ wrote also the titanic Ninth
and added its mighty chorus. Michelangelo did statuettes and sonnets,
but also his “Day of Judgment” and his prodigious horned Moses.
To the sincere artist it is the idea that is vital. Once that has
inflamed him, he seeks only to give it the shape and the size that its
nature dictates.
So Gutzon Borglum, being sensitive to all the moods of life, a born
poet, with an innate love of form for its own sake, quick to glow with
inspirations of every kind and determined to give each its unique and
eloquent shape, has painted and carved without fear or favor the
exquisite and the tremendous with equal fidelity.
His genius shines in the little bas-relief of a nymph; in sardonic
gargoyles; in the tiny yet epic statuette of the dying Nero, a bloated
coward tangled in his toga and drooping to his ignoble death; in the
suave portrait of the seated Ruskin; the pathos of the old Boer warrior;
in the billowy rush of the stampeding “Mares of Diomedes”; in his
colossal head of Lincoln; in his war memorial for Newark, New Jersey,
with its marvellously composed forty-two figures and two horses; his
magnificent plan for the Stone Mountain, whose thwarting is one of the
great tragedies of art; and finally in his supreme achievement, the
Mount Rushmore Memorial, where he brought his art to the mountains and
left there the four great faces for all eternity.
This unparalleled accomplishment seems to have been not so much the
carving of those vast heads upon the peaks as the beating away of the
veiling, smothering stone and the releasing of the imprisoned statesmen
so that they might look out upon the world and utter their lofty
messages in a silence more pervasive and sonorous than any trumpet-tone.
The heads stand up there against the clouds like cloud-gods. Yet they
are not offered as gods, but as plain men who glorified the plain man.
Each of them is greater in magnitude than the so-called Egyptian Sphinx.
The Sphinx represented an unanswerable riddle and she cruelly destroyed
all who could not answer it. But these presidents of ours represent
brave, clear thinking towards safety and dignity and happiness for all
mankind.
The Sphinx was really a portrait, the largest portrait ever made till
Borglum came along. It is the head of King Khafre set on the body of a
crouching lion guarding the king’s tomb, with his pyramid back of it.
Khafre had it built during a reign that ended over four thousand, seven
hundred and fifty years ago.
Near the Sphinx and Khafre’s pyramid is the greater pyramid of King
Khufu, better known to us as Cheops. He lived from 2898 to 2875 BC. and
his pyramid contains over two million blocks of stone, of an average
weight of two and a half tons. Herodotus was told that it took a hundred
thousand men twenty years to build it.
Near Karnak there are still standing—or sitting—two portrait statues of
Amenhotep III, who ruled fourteen hundred years B.C.—just about the time
of Moses. These statues are seventy feet high.
One of the four colossal statues at Abu Simbel represents Rameses II,
who died about two thousand, six hundred years ago. Lying on its side is
a broken statue of Rameses II, once 90 feet high and carved from a
single thousand-ton block. This and another statue of him in granite
ninety feet high were, according to Breasted writing in 1905, “the
greatest monolithic statues ever executed.”
But Borglum’s bust of Washington is larger than the whole figure of
Rameses, Lincoln’s nose is 21 feet long and the sparkle in his eye is
secured by a block of granite thirty inches long.
Some of the Egyptian portraits were carved upon their cliffs somewhat as
Borglum’s statues are upon the peaks. At Abu Simbel there are four such
statues of enormous bulk.
The Assyrians also built huge monuments, and inscribed the texts of
whole histories on the faces of cliffs. Their kings were usually
represented as enormous winged bulls with the heads of bearded men.
These were called, strangely enough, “cherubs.”
The Greeks created for their greater gods statues of gold and
ivory—whence the epithet “chryselephantine.” Such was the colossal Zeus
that Pheidias made for Olympia. It was about fifty feet high. Pheidias
made also two colossal figures of Athena for Athens, one in bronze that
stood up like a lighthouse and was visible to sailors far out to sea.
The other had ivory flesh and robes of gold, and was seventy feet high.
The famous bronze Colossus of Rhodes, erected about 274 B.C. by Chares
of Lindus, was 105 feet high. It did not straddle a stream, as tradition
has it. Half a century after it was set up, an earthquake overthrew it;
in 656 A.D. it was sold for junk and carried off by a caravan of 900
camels.
In China one still sees enormous Buddhas, and in our own world the Mayan
monstrosities are being brought back from the jungle that swallowed them
like a sea.
The statue of Liberty—a gift to us from France—is 151 feet high; with
its pedestal it is 305 feet tall.
But none of the giants ancient or modern has approached the size of the
greater works of Borglum.
This carver of mountains was himself a mountainy man, born in the
mountainous state of Idaho on March 25, 1871. His full name was John
Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum. His parents had come over from Denmark. His
father, at first a woodcarver, became a physician and surgeon, also a
breeder of horses on a 6000-acre ranch. He had no money to give his
children, but he gave them a love of form and a knowledge of the horse
that not only inspired Gutzon Borglum to some of his most magnificent
work, but also made a splendid career for his younger brother, Solon.
Solon took fire from Gutzon’s fire, worked his way to Paris, won honors
there, and came home to his West where he turned out a stream of
important sculptures that perpetuate many poignant phases of Western
life. His life was suddenly ended in 1922 by an attack of acute
appendicitis.
Gutzon’s indomitable will carried him from the Idaho ranch to an art
school in San Francisco, thence to Paris. He began as both painter and
sculptor and was accepted as both by the French salons. In England,
critics and royalty heaped honors on him. After painting a series of
murals for a big hotel at Leeds and another series for a concert hall at
Manchester, he began to abandon the brushes for the chisel, and to turn
out statuary in almost every field and almost every imaginable form.
From the first, his works won the highest honors. The Metropolitan
Museum bought his “Mares of Diomedes” at once and the French Government
promptly purchased a partial replica of it for the Luxembourg Gallery.
Commissions rained on him and there was never any repetition in the
spirit or treatment of his responses.
There is not space here for even a catalogue of his triumphs. He also
wrote much and well. He was an engineer and an inventor, overcoming by
his own skill supposedly unconquerable problems involved in the
construction of his larger works. He was an orator of eloquence with a
practical skill in politics. At times he was a statesman and the close
associate of Paderewski and Masaryk in their re-creation of their lost
republics. During the first World War he investigated and exposed the
causes for a mysterious and dangerous failure in American aircraft
manufacture. His career has a strange kinship in its versatility with
that of Leonardo da Vinci, and I believe that his name will live as
long.
In 1909 he married Mary Montgomery, a distinguished scholar in ancient
Oriental languages, and a translator of cuneiform inscriptions. A son
and a daughter blessed this union of two great souls.
It was in 1907 that I first met Gutzon Borglum while preparing an
article on his work, to which I paid complete homage. This was the
beginning of a lifelong friendship of which I wrote him while he was
glorifying the South Dakota mountains:
“I have always had an awe and a reverence for you that fought with my
love for the simple, jovial, twinkling-eyed friend you always were.”
He answered: “You have said your say about me and it is a wet eye that
reads through the letter. You know how vandalism in the name of
Civilization raids the tombs of our ancestors and destroys the records
of History. One of my motives in this work was to carve these records of
our great West-World adventure as high into the heavens as I could find
the stone.”
As man and as sculptor he was passionately American and he has not only
given to his country monuments of art that equal the greatest of other
nations, but he has given artistic expression to the ideals that make
America America.
The Sphinx and its temple have only recently been recovered from the
sand that submerged them for thousands of years. Yet even now the worst
tyrannies and cruelties of the Pharaohs have been revived and paralleled
in Europe, just as our gentlest, noblest ideals were to be found
co-existing with savagery in ancient Egypt.
I hope, I believe that in 7000 A.D. there will be pilgrimages to Mount
Rushmore by Americans still keeping alive the flames of freedom kindled
and rekindled by the four heroes Borglum had immortalized, immortalizing
himself and his and their ideals along with them.
His Mount Rushmore Memorial presents to posterity four great Americans
who upheld the rights and equalities of all mankind, and who were
themselves the very personifications of Americanism.
Their noble heads are lofty enough to mingle with the clouds, and the
parading lights of sun and moon and stars, and the processionals of rain
and snow and mist give them a beauty that is always changing yet
everlastingly changeless.
Only a great soul and a great artist could have conceived or achieved
such a monument to them and to himself. His gifts of spirit and
execution were, I feel, unsurpassed by anything of their kind in the
history of the world.
[Illustration: The Memorial]
[Illustration: _The Memorial in winter with a light fall of snow
softening the surrounding landscape._]
FROM THE BEGINNING
_By_ MRS. GUTZON BORGLUM
A nation’s memorials are a record of its civilization and the artist who
builds them is the instrument of his time. He is inspired by the same
forces that influence the nation’s destiny—the greater the period, the
greater the art. The artist cannot escape his destiny. Like the “Hound
of Heaven” it “pursues him down the years,” forces him to leave his
home, to go into exile, to combat mountains even, to accomplish what
must be.
How else can we explain why a man should abandon a comfortable way of
life, among pleasant surroundings, to hurl himself against a gigantic
rock, to cling like a human fly to a perpendicular peak, to struggle
with hostile human nature, in order to carve against the sky a record of
the great experiment in democracy on this continent—a record which will
live on and be an inspiration to future generations, a shrine to be
visited, even after the thing it commemorated may have passed.
This is the history of Rushmore told in a few words. The contributing
factors are of interest and should be related but two outstanding facts
are that a few kindred souls, giants in their day, fostered a form of
democratic government and established a great nation and that a hundred
and fifty years later another group of Americans realized the importance
of making a record in the granite for all time of what manner of men
they were and what they achieved.
The initial step in this great enterprise was taken by Doane Robinson,
state historian of South Dakota, who had heard of the monument being
carved in Georgia by Gutzon Borglum to honor the heroes of the South in
the war between the states and thought it would be a fine idea to have a
similar patriotic shrine in South Dakota to bring that state to the
attention of the nation.
Mr. Robinson invited Mr. Borglum in 1924 to visit the Black Hills to see
what could be done. The first thought was to carve the likeness of
Washington and perhaps of Lincoln in one of the granite upthrusts known
as the Needles. The stone, however, was not suitable and there was no
special reason for memorializing Washington and Lincoln as individual
presidents in South Dakota. Then Mr. Robinson told the sculptor of a
lead tablet discovered by children playing near old Fort Pierre, which
had been planted there in 1743 by Verendrye, an emissary of Louis of
France, sent to establish French territory behind the English. This
fired his imagination. Here was a subject for the great memorial he
wanted to carve in the Hills.
South Dakota lies in the heart of the old Louisiana Territory, purchased
by Jefferson in 1803, in order to control the mouth of the Mississippi,
which marked the first step away from the Atlantic seaboard colonies in
the expansion of the little republic. That step led to the establishment
of Texas, the conquest of California, the acquisition of Oregon and
Alaska and the spanning of the continent from ocean to ocean by the
empire nation called the United States. This was a subject worthy of a
mountain—a monument to a nation, to its philosophy of government, its
ideals and aspirations, its great leaders. Here in this remote spot,
protected by its inaccessibility from the vandalism of succeeding
generations, would be carved a Shrine of Democracy, as an imperishable
record of a great people.
[Illustration: _Here is Mt. Rushmore as it stood for countless ages
before the poetic and patriotic idea of the great national memorial
was born in the mind of Gutzon Borglum._]
Mr. Borglum paid a second and third visit to the Hills and camped among
them for two weeks, exploring and examining every rock large enough to
suggest a monument, with the result that the huge granite upthrust
called Mount Rushmore was selected as the only stone sound enough to be
suitable for carving. Another reason for choosing Rushmore was the
important consideration of lighting. It was imperative that the cliff on
which the figures were to be carved should face the east in order to get
the maximum amount of sunlight all the day long. Washington’s face is so
placed that it catches the first rays of light in the morning and
reflects the last ruddy glow in the evening. Many beautiful works of art
are made insignificant by poor lighting.
Senator Peter Norbeck, who had created the park system of South Dakota
and played an important part in the creation of the Rushmore Memorial,
also agreed that, in spite of its remote position with only riding
trails leading to it, there was no other location possible.
[Illustration: _Ranging downward like spiders swinging on fine
threads, workmen made the strokes on the granite mountainside which
now bears the features of George Washington._]
[Illustration: _Scaffolding suspended from cables enabled the
workmen to reach down from the brow of the mountain in order to
carry on their courageous and difficult labors._]
That autumn a group of Rapid City women put on a pageant of flags,
designed by Mr. Borglum, on the top of the cliff to show the different
epochs through which the territory had passed. The French flag was first
hoisted, then the Spanish, then the flag of Napoleon, next the colonial
flag and finally the present flag of the United States. Thus was Mount
Rushmore officially dedicated to the Memorial. Mr Borglum then returned
to his temporary studio in San Antonio, Texas, to make the models and
decide what characters best illustrated the idea to which he was trying
to give form.
George Washington’s presence in the group was inevitable. He was the
rock on which the republic was founded—the plumb line to establish its
direction. So on Mount Rushmore his head is exactly perpendicular,
facing the east, unaffected by the others in the group, the measuring
rod determining the position of the others. Equally important with
Washington was Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of
Independence. By the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, as stated
above, he had taken the first step westward in the course of the
nation’s growth. He is represented on the mountain as a young man. He
was only 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln, the saviour of the republic, was inevitable in any
record of the country’s history and finally Theodore Roosevelt was
selected because, by cutting the Panama Canal, he had accomplished the
dream of Columbus and opened a Sea-way from Europe to Asia and his name
was closely linked with the territorial expansion following the war with
Spain. He was also the first president to attempt the curbing of big
business interests and the only president who had been familiar with the
west. He had close associations with South Dakota.
[Illustration: _Models in the studio at the foot of the mountain
which guided construction of the actual figures (seen through
window)._]
The Mount Harney Memorial Association was authorized in 1925 by the
state legislature to undertake the project on Mount Rushmore. No funds
were voted for the purpose. Contributions were obtained from the three
railroads serving the state, from the Homestake Mine and from private
individuals, among them Mr. Charles Rushmore, a New York lawyer, after
whom, quite accidentally, the cliff had been named. The work went on
slowly, with considerable opposition, until President Coolidge’s visit
to the Black Hills in 1927. He made a splendid speech at a picturesque
ceremony held at Rushmore, immediately following which he took Mr.
Borglum aside, inquired about the financing and urged him to come to
Washington for help. It is doubtful whether, without this impetus given
by President Coolidge, the carving would ever have been accomplished.
The Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission came into existence as
the result of a Congressional Bill, passed on Washington’s Birthday in
1929. The act carried an appropriation of $250,000 for the memorial,
which was to be matched on a fifty-fifty basis by private subscriptions;
it designated Gutzon Borglum as the sculptor and designer of the four
figures and provided also for an inscription on the mountain.
The first ascent of the mountain was made up the canyon where the
present wooden stairway now is. After the initial survey was made, pine
trees with branches cut off and cleats nailed at right angles to the
trees were laid in the crevices to serve as ladders. Heavy ropes were
then carried by hand to the top and a small winch was carried as far as
possible by pack horse and then carried to the top by hand. After this
winch was fastened on the top of the mountain, it in turn was used to
pull up the heavy cable that became the tramway from the ground to the
mountain top. Building material was pulled up and shelters built for the
men. A small studio was also built to house the plaster reproductions of
the master models that were in the studio at the foot of the mountain.
These reproductions were used for measurements to save time required to
go to the studio 1500 feet away and 500 feet below. In some cases these
models were hung over the side of the mountain so that they could be
consulted and compared with the measurements as the actual stone work
progressed. By this method it was possible to save considerable time and
labor.
[Illustration: _Roughing out the face of Theodore Roosevelt. The
strong chin and the mouth are already visible. The mass of stone at
the top will be carved away to form the mustache._]
The work of fitting the figures into the cracked granite upthrust called
Mt. Rushmore has been a constant struggle between composition and
finding solid stone for each of the four heads.
[Illustration: _Close-up of Lincoln. Note the shafts of granite in
the eyes of Lincoln. The light reflected by these shafts gives the
eyes their lifelike glint when seen from a distance._]
In the first design Jefferson was placed at the right of Washington and
Lincoln on his left, and Theodore Roosevelt occupied the position now
occupied by Lincoln. However serious flaws developed in the stone on
this side of Washington; and it therefore became necessary to change our
design and place Jefferson to Washington’s left. This made it necessary
to place Theodore Roosevelt between Jefferson and Lincoln, and the stone
had to be removed to a depth of approximately 120 feet from the original
surface to get back far enough for the Roosevelt face. The heads were
finally relegated to their approximate position (being moved several
times as new conditions of the stone developed), that is they were
tilted or dropped or made to look more to the right or left as the case
might have been, to meet the composition or avoid flaws in the stone.
This movement being made simply by moving the respective heads on the
model and cutting the stone accordingly. It was not possible to fit the
heads so that they would be entirely free from fissures, but it was
possible to place them so that none of these fissures would be
unsupported from below and that removes the danger of some vital part
dropping off. As each head was started its center was located, and at
this center point on the top of the head a plate was located. This was
graduated in degrees 0 to 360 degrees, and at its center a horizontal
arm was located that traversed this horizontal are. This arm was about
30 feet long, in effect a giant protractor laid on top of the head. The
arm was graduated in feet and inches so that at any point we could drop
a plumb bob from this arm, and by measuring the vertical distance on
this plumb line determine exactly the amount of stone to be removed.
After determining this master center point on the mountain, we set a
smaller arc and arm on our model in the same relative position. With
this small device we would make all our measurements on our model and
then enlarge them twelve times and transfer them to the large measuring
device on the mountain. Thru this system every face had a measurement
made every six inches both vertically and horizontally. These
measurements were then painted on the stone and it was thru this means
that men totally unfamiliar with sculptural form were able to do this
undertaking. In fact all the men employed on the work were local men
trained by the sculptor.
Pneumatic drills are used for drilling and the compressed air is
provided by large compressors located on the ground and driven by
electricity. The air is forced or conveyed to the top of the mountain by
a 3″ pipe and then by the use of smaller pipes and rubber hoses is
conveyed to the drills.
Over 400,000 tons of granite have been removed from the mountain in
carving the figures, at a total expense of slightly more than $900,000.
This includes all building, stairways and machinery.
[Illustration: _Workmen putting the finishing touches on the strong
face of the Rough-rider President._]
The men are let down over the face of the stone in leather swings
similar to bos’n chairs used on ships. These swings are fastened on to
⅜″ steel cables which are in turn fastened on to winches located on the
top of the heads. These winches are operated by hand. There are about
seven winches on the top of each head. The men are lowered to their
place of work by these winches, taking with them their jackhammers or
pneumatic tools and other necessary equipment. One man is located in a
position where he can see all the men at work, and is “The Callboy,” and
has a microphone with a loud speaker at each of the winches and when any
of the men working in the swings wants to be raised or lowered they
signal this call-boy and he relays the message thru the loud speakers to
the winchman. He also keeps the workmen supplied with new drills as they
need them, by relaying their requests to the steelman who carries the
steel to the men in the swings as it is needed. This steel is used over
and over again; as it is dulled it is taken to the blacksmith shop on
the ground via the cable car, heated, sharpened, re-heated and tempered
and sent back to the mountain again. About 400 of these drills are
dulled each day. They drill on an average about four feet before being
sharpened. In some places the stone is so hard they will only last or
drill about six inches and in other places they will last seven or eight
feet before being re-sharpened.
[Illustration: _The work in process as it appeared from an odd angle
... from the road running along the side of the mountain. Not many
have seen the Memorial from this point of view._]
The problem of finance has always been acute in connection with the work
of the Rushmore Memorial. The economic hardships of the country made it
increasingly difficult to match the Federal appropriation, without which
the carving could not go on. The sculptor made repeated trips through
the state and beyond its borders to arouse interest in the undertaking.
He succeeded in raising some money by publishing a small book about
Rushmore. There were never enough funds for as much power or as many men
as he would have liked to use. There were long months when the work was
stopped altogether. Finally the government took over the whole burden of
financing and the work continued regularly, after 1938, being halted
only by weather conditions. The sculptor was at last able to employ one
or two trained stone carvers to do the finer work of finishing.
The Washington head was unveiled in 1930, with Mr. Cullinan, first
chairman of the Rushmore Commission presiding. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt came for the unveiling of the Jefferson head in 1936. His
unfailing interest and support have insured the finishing of the
Memorial. At the unveiling of the face of Abraham Lincoln in 1937, a
nation wide radio hookup carried the speeches to all parts of the
country and again in 1939, when Governor Bushfield of South Dakota
conducted ceremonies celebrating the Golden Jubilee of the State of
South Dakota at Mount Rushmore, the radio carried the speeches and music
all over the United States. The upper part of the face of Theodore
Roosevelt was uncovered at that time.
[Illustration: _The face of Jefferson begins to take form. The nose
and the forehead are already plainly visible, but many tons of stone
must be removed before the picture is complete._]
Mr. Borglum was always scrupulously careful to protect his men from harm
and it was his boast that in all his years of hazardous mountain carving
no worker was seriously injured. He took no care of himself, however,
and physicians said that undoubtedly the strenuous work of carving at
that altitude weakened his heart and in March, 1941, it stopped beating.
The carving was practically finished; there remained only the finishing
of the hands and hair of the four figures and the Rushmore National
Memorial Commission entrusted that work to the sculptor’s son, Lincoln
Borglum, who had been with his father from the beginning of the work.
[Illustration: _A blast is set off. The handling of powder and
dynamite was an especially delicate problem, since a single badly
placed charge might easily spoil the work of many months._]
The faces of the four presidents, as carved on Mount Rushmore, are
approximately 60 feet from chin to forehead; if completed from head to
foot the figures would be 465 feet high. The entire head of the sphinx
in Egypt is not quite as long as Washington’s nose. The entire cost of
the Memorial, including all expenses of carving, buildings and salaries,
is $900,000. This is at the rate of less than two dollars for every ton
of stone removed, which is a cost incredibly low considering the
hardness of the granite and that every piece must be removed in such a
way as not to injure the surface behind. On this investment the Federal
Government has received from tourists from the one cent gas tax on the
increased sale of gas during the years since the work started over two
million dollars and the income to South Dakota is over twenty million
dollars annually.
[Illustration: _From these beginnings today shine forth the faces of
four of the greatest men of American history, to light the path of
freedom for countless generations yet to come._]