Mt. Rushmore History
The large sculpture of four United States Presidents is carved in Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota. The Mountain was named in 1885 for an attorney from New York, Charles E. Rushmore. Gutzon Borglum chose this particular mountain on which to create this majestic sculpture because it was smooth-grained granite, the height of the mountain towered over the other terrain and the face of the mountain was in the sun most of the day.
The work on the mountain began in 1927 at the direction of sculptor Gutzon Borglum who was sixty years old at the time. The work on the Memorial continued until Borglum's death in 1940. Gutzon Borglum wanted to carve a larger than life representation of what he felt that America stood for - the spirit of independence on which the country was founded, the preservation of our natural resources, while at the same time expanding the country's borders.
The idea of a massive sculpture started as way 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.
Mount Rushmore represents the largest work of art on earth. The sixty foot tall faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln rise up over a valley of pine, spruce, birch and aspen at an elevation of 5,725 feet. To imagine the height of these faces, compare them to the Statue of Liberty's face which is only 17 feet tall. This truly is a massive and awe inspiring display of one man's desire to produce a piece of art that would stand for years in tribute to a country that he loved.
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