It started as an idea to draw sightseers. In 1923 state historian Doane Robinson suggested carving some giant statues in South Dakota's Black Hills. Robinson was not the first American to think that a big country demanded big art. As early as 1849, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton proposed a super-scale Christopher Columbus in the Rocky Mountains. In 1886 the 150-foot Statue of Liberty was unveiled. Now, in the 1920s, an unconventional sculptor named Gutzon Borglum was carving a Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain in Georgia. Robinson wanted his sculptures to stand at the gateway to the west, where the Black Hills rise from the plains as a geographical prelude to the Rockies. Here, granite outcroppings resist erosion to form the Needles, cluster of tall, thin peaks reminiscent of the spires on a Gothic cathedral. Robinson imagined the Needles transformed into a parade of Indian leaders and American explorers who shaped the frontier. Robinson's own enthusiasm did not translate into public support. Many people were skeptical or downright hostile. "Man makes statues," proclaimed local conservationist Cora B. Johnson, "but God made the Needles." Undaunted, the memorial backers called in the master sculptor of Stone Mountain. In an era when many artists scorned traditional patriotism, Gutzon Borglum made his name through celebration of things American. As his style evolved, "American" came to mean "big." "Our age will some day be called the 'Colossal Age,' "complained Borglum, "There is not a monument in this country as big as a snuff box." Born in Idaho in 1867, this son of Danish Mormons studied art in Paris. Back home he worked in the shadow of his artist brother Solon even after several works brought Gutzon moderate fame. Among them were a remodeled torch for the Statue of Liberty, saints and apostles for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, a seated Lincoln in Newark, N.J. and an oversized Lincoln bust for the U.S. Capitol. In 1915 he began the Stone Mountain memorial which brought experience in large-scale granite carving - and in showmanship.
Borglum scouted out a location far better than the fragile Needles: 5,725-foot Mount Rushmore, named in 1885 for New York lawyer Charles E. Rushmore. Its broad wall of exposed granite faced southeast to receive direct sunlight for most of the day. Borglum's choice of subjects promised to elevate the memorial from a regional enterprise to a national cause, "in commemoration of the foundation, preservation and continental expansion of the United States." Borglum envisioned four U.S. presidents beside an entablature inscribed with a brief history of the country. In a separate wall behind the carved figures the Hall of Records would preserve national documents and artifacts.
President Calvin Coolidge dedicated the memorial in 1927, commencing 14 years of work; only 6 1/2 years were spent on actual carving. Money was the main problem in the Great Depression years. It was here that Gutzon Borglum's self-appraisal as a "one-man war" was earned. He personally lobbied state officials, congressmen, cabinet members and presidents. "The work is purely a national memorial," he insisted at a congressional hearing in 1938. Pride in country - and the fact that public works created good jobs and good will - channeled $836,000 of federal money toward to the total cost of nearly $1 million.
The Washington head was formally dedicated in 1930, followed by Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937 and Roosevelt in 1939. Borglum died in March 1941; the final dedication was not held until 50 years later. Son, Lincoln Borglum supervised the completion of the heads. Carving stopped in October 1941, on the eve of our entry into World War II. Gutzon Borglum himself might have commented that the time had come to defend the principles Mount Rushmore preserved in stone.
"A monument's dimensions should be determined by the importance to civilization of the events commemorated...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." - Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon Borglum's vision for Mount Rushmore was no less than "the formal rendering of the philosophy of our government into a granite on a mountain peak." Having won fame for realistic portraiture, Borglum naturally chose to give human form to the abstract. His monument to America was a grouping of four leaders who brought the country from colonial times into the 20th century. The most prominent position went to George Washington, commander of the Revolutionary army and first U.S. President: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the Republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people" (First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789). Next was Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President and advocate of westward expansion: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" (Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776). To the far right was 16th President Abraham Lincoln, whose leadership restored the Union and ended slavery on U.S. soil: "Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it" (Address at Cooper Union, February 27, 1860). If Borglum had a hero of his own, it was 26th President Theodore Roosevelt, who promoted construction of the Panama Canal and ignited progressive causes such as conservation and business reform: "We, here in America, hold in our hands the hopes of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men" (Address at Carnegie Hall, March 30, 1912).
Everyone wanted to see the men on the mountain. Gutzon Borglum, who regarded his masterpiece as far more than a tourist attraction, was no doubt reassured when the phrase "Shrine of Democracy" was coined at the 1930 dedication of the Washington head. From then on its role as an American icon has been unquestioned, but how successful is the memorial as a work of art? Consider the assessment of another individual who made a name lending art and nature: "The noble countenances emerge from Rushmore," wrote architect Frank Lloyd Wright, "as though the spirit of the mountain heard a human plan and itself became a human countenance."
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