Mt Rushmore

We made it to Mount Rushmore. It is a very beautiful and large monument! Gutzon Borglum started carving it when he was 60 (along with help from many unskilled local men.) He died before it was completed and his son Lincoln worked a meare six more months before deaming it done (even though his father intended it to be bigger). It was started in the 1920's and completed 14 years later in 1941 (with the start of the war funding could not be found). We went to the visitor center/museum before we headed to Mt Rushmore where we learned quite a bit about the Borglum story. It was quite fascinating.

 

The union of these four presidents carved on the face of the everlasting hills of South Dakota will consitute a distinctly national monument. It will be decidedly American in its conception, in its magnitude, in its meaning and altogether worthy of our country. From dedication address by President Calivin Coolidge - 1927

 

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....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 -1930