Mt. Rushmore

When I was younger, I used to watch Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" and be amazed that they could crawl around on those giant faces. Each is 60 feet high. The carvings were initially supposed to be much bigger - they were planned to be from the waist up, but apparently funding ran out before the carving work did. The final tally: $989,992.32. (What do you suppose that thirty-two cents bought?)It took 14 years to build the monument, but while there were injuries, no one was actually killed during the construction. Mount Rushmore was originally known as Six Grandfathers by the Lakota Sioux (who still dispute the monument as the land was granted to them under the Treaty of Fort Laramie), but got renamed after a New York lawyer who visited the area.Teddy Roosevelt's head was the last one finished in 1939. In 1937 a bill was introduced to include Susan B. Anthony's head, but a rider on an appropriations bill cut off funding for this, so the number remained four.Thomas Jefferson's head was originally to be carved to the right of Washington's. However, after work was begun on it, they found the rock to be less stable than anticipated, so they dynamited what they had carved (blew his head clean off) and tucked him to the left instead. His face was dedicated in 1936.

Abraham Lincoln's head was dedicated in 1937. I find it intriguing that the sculptor (Gutzon Borglum) was a prominent member of the KKK and yet he acquiesced to including Lincoln's visage. I'm glad he did (though I suppose it had more to do with presidential pressure since Coolidge wanted Lincoln's face up there).





George Washington's was the first face dedicated, being done on July 4, 1934.

If there were bodies carved to scale, these men would stand 465 feet tall. No wonder Cary Grant could climb around on them! Being carved from the fine-grained granite of the Black Hills mountains, they are eroding at a rate of roughly 1 inch every 10,000 years, so I think I still have a chance to see them someday.