Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, USA
(Unknown / Library of Congress)
Originally proposed in 1923 by State Historian Doane Robinson as a memorial to great heroes of the West, the design and carving of South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore were executed by sculptor Gutzon Borglum. It was Borglum who persuaded Robinson to abandon the West theme – including Lakota Sioux leader Red Cloud – and instead to create a monument to American presidents. Work began in 1927, and was declared complete in October 1941. Borglum had died six months earlier.
‘On one occasion Borglum arranged for a meeting of senators. He wanted to carve a history of the United States on the mountainside, in English, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Senator Tom Connally, of Texas, blurted out, “What in the world do you want to cut it in Sanskrit for? Nobody reads that.”
Borglum turned on Tom with a withering look of scorn. Striking a dramatic pose, he said, as nearly as I can now recall: “Sir, Mount Rushmore is eternal. It will stand there until the end of time. This age will pass away and all its records will be destroyed; 10,000 years from now all our civilization will have passed without leaving a trace. A new race of people will come to inhabit the earth. They will come to Mount Rushmore and read there the record that we have made. If that record is written on that immortal mountain in four languages, those people will not have the difficulty in reading our record that we had in figuring out the hieroglyphics of Egypt.”’
William J. Bulow, ‘My Days with Gutzon Borglum’, 1947
