1. There’s something about being carved in stone that means it’s easy to imagine that Mount Rushmore is a lot more venerable than it actually is. In fact, it’s substantially less than a century old – which, given that one of the guys whose faces it features only stopped being president 116 years ago, makes a fair bit of sense.
2. The idea of creating an enormous sculpture in the Black Hills – yes, the ones from Calamity Jane – was dreamed up in 1923 by the South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson, who saw it as a way of attracting tourists to a largely empty state quite a long way from anywhere. It worked – but this history is a reminder that what is now an important national monument was essentially one of those giant roadside attractions which towns in big empty countries install to get passing drivers to stop and spend money.
3. So enthusiastic was the federal government about this idea that Mount Rushmore was designated a national memorial a century ago this year – before construction had even begun.
4. The original plan was to carve the faces of heroes of the old west – Buffalo Bill, the explorers Lewis and Clark, the Oglala Lakota leader Red Cloud – into the granite pillars known as the Needles. But Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor commissioned to do the job, thought the Needles might be difficult to carve, and anyway all that sounded a bit small – so the plan was upgraded to “busts of presidents from the shoulders up, into a mountain” instead.
5. The mountain in question was known, to the Lakota, as the “Six Grandfathers”, and has also variously been called Sugarloaf Mountain, Slaughterhouse Mountain, Cougar Mountain, and Keystone Cliffs. Its modern name, recognised by the US Board on Geographic Names in 1930, comes from a New York lawyer who surveyed the area in 1885. Apparently his guide wanted to impress him.
6. The four presidents who were chosen were intended to represent the first 150 years of US history, a milestone reached shortly before construction began. George Washington (first president, 1789-97) represents the nation’s foundation; Thomas Jefferson (third, 1801-09) its westward expansion through the Louisiana Purchase; Abraham Lincoln (16th, 1861-65) its preservation despite the trauma of civil war; and Theodore Roosevelt (26th, 1901-09) its blossoming into a global power.
7. Actually, the faces are in the wrong order, with Roosevelt coming between Jefferson and Lincoln. Which is irritating in the extreme.
8. It’s also a bit odd to note that the most recent president featured had, at time construction began, left office only 18 years before. A British equivalent including prime ministers with the same time gap from today would thus feature prime ministers ranging from William Ewart Gladstone to Tony Blair.
9. Construction eventually began in 1927. Most of the 400 men employed were out-of-work miners who’d gone looking for gold but couldn’t find any, and so put their skills with dynamite and jackhammers to use carving presidents’ faces into a mountain instead. As you do. Remarkably, in the 14 years construction took, not one of them died.
10. In 1937, a bill appeared in Congress making the shocking suggestion that the face of a woman – women’s rights leader Susan B Anthony – should also be added to the mountain. Congress was so delighted by this idea that it responded by passing a bill denying funding to any extra heads.
11. Construction was declared complete on October 31, 1941 – but actually, the job was never quite finished. Borglum died (of natural causes, not in a dynamite-based incident) in March 1941, and his son – the aptly named Lincoln – took over; but the money soon ran out. The monument thus didn’t include either the eight-foot gilded letters intended to commemorate the US’ various territorial expansions, or anything below the four presidents’ faces.
12. Another insight into quite how recent all this is: the last surviving carver to have worked on the monument, Nick Clifford, survived long enough to miss the arrival of Covid-19 by a matter of weeks. He died in November 2019, at the age of 98.
13. Donald Trump has discussed the possibility of adding a fifth face to the monument – and you’ll never guess who he has in mind! He’s been floating the idea ever since then-South Dakota governor Kristi Noem gave him a mock-up as a gift during a 2020 presidential visit. (So impressed was the president that for his second term he named Noem secretary of homeland security. She now spends her time sending TikToks from outside cages of half-naked immigrants in El Salvador and so forth.)
14. Alas for Trump’s legacy, the US Park Service has said there are simply “no viable locations” for any additional faces. What aspect of US history Trump’s face would represent is left to the reader to decide.
Suggested Reading
Nerd’s Eye View: 12 things you need to know about the Strait of Hormuz
60ft
Height of each face, making them just under 50 times lifesize
14 years
Construction time: 6 years of carving, 8.5 of weather – and funding-related delays
450,000
Tonnes of rock removed from the mountain, mostly through dynamite
$989,000
Total cost of the project (a bargain)
$5,000
Share of that cost donated by the guy who got his name on the mountain
