Travel Secrets by V

An iconic image of the United States, Mount Rushmore features 60 ft sculptures of the heads of four famous US presidents carved into the Black Hills of Keystone, South Dakota. By the way, the original design didn’t include presidents at all. As a matter of fact, it was actually supposed to portray American heroes such as Lewis, Clark, Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill Cody. On a side note, this site also holds a deep secret that very few people have access to. Which is the secret room built behind Lincolns head.

From American Icons to Presidents

Back in the early 1900’s historian Doane Robinson wanted to bring tourists to South Dakota so he came up with a tourist “trap” big enough to attract people far and wide to see it. Ultimately, he wanted someone to carve iconic heroes into the needles in the black hills. So he hired sculptor Gutzon Borglum to run the project. However, the needles were a bad site for the project because they were brittle and not suitable for carving. In reality, the result would have been a bunch of totem poles sculpted with American icons. Which would have looked ridiculous over time. In the hope that the images would have a better chance of surviving over time. Gutzon found a much better location where images could be carved into the granite mountains instead. The original construction only included 3 presidents.

Extremely precise Greek construction system

Mount Rushmore offered the highest pay around in 1929. Since jobs were scarce in the Black Hills at the time, miners and even the baseball team were hired and trained for the job. Incredibly no deaths or critical injuries happened during the building of this site. Nevertheless, it took 14 years with 400 workers. Using a Greek pointer system, the entire construction was built to scale. So much so that, one inch on the scale was twelve inches on the mountain.

The Four Presidents

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), for the Declaration of Independence, he was also responsible for the Louisiana acquisition. He was originally supposed to be left of Washington but faults in the rock caused Jefferson to be blown away and restarted. His head is tilted upwards slightly higher than the others, some will say it’s because he was a visionary but the reality is that there was a crack in the granite in his nose at his new location and they had to keep drilling until the crack was gone.

George Washington (1732–1799), because he was the first president, his head was the first and is bigger than the sphinx’s head in Egypt.

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Because he ended slavery.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), He wasn’t included in the original design but he was friends with Gutzom and that’s what got his face up there.

The faces were completed between 1934-1939. They were supposed to be depicted from head to waist but lack of funds forced the construction to end on Oct 31,1941, just a few months after Gutzon Borglum passed away and the project was passed on to Lincoln. You’ll notice a ton of rock at the base of this site and that’s because construction stopped before it was ever completed and because of that, the site was never cleaned up.

Incredible detail

The sculptures are beautifully carved into the side of the mountain.  Their immense size is impressive. Gutzon did a great job at carving these presidents.  The faces are incredibly smooth and proportional.  The iris of the eyes were sculpted as holes and a cube of granite was left in each eye to create natural highlights. He even used an avant garde method for Roosevelts glasses.  This gives these sculptures a very realistic effect.  As you stand in admiration in front of this sculpture. You get a true feeling of Gutzon’s message which was “Every man has the right to be Free and to be Happy”

The Secret Room

Gutzom wanted to make sure that in 10,000 years from now, his work would still be recognized. In order to make sure that people would know who the faces that he sculpted were, he started building a hall of records, right behind Lincolns head. It was supposed to be a tunnel with a dome exhibition hall for tourist to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution but carving the hall proved to be more difficult than carving the mountain itself and so the uncompleted project was transformed when Gutzom passed away. At the end of the tunnel behind Lincolns head lies a vault that contains a copy of the constitution, declaration of Independence and other items that will someday explain our history and culture to future generations. Very few people have access to this Hall of Records so don’t plan on trying to see it.

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