Granite Guys

   Welcome to Friday with Joe McDonnell.

    On this day in 1927 Gutzon Borglum began his sculptures on Mount Rushmore. He worked on this colossal project until his death in March of 1941. His son Lincoln completed the project in October of that year. It had cost a little under a million dollars to complete the work. The scuptures of Presidents Washington, Jefferson Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt were initially to have been portrayed from the waist up, but there was only enough funding for the heads.
   Borglum was born in 1867 in Idaho Territory. His first name was John and his full middle name was Gutzon de la Mothe. His parents were Danish immigrants and members of the Mormon church. His mother and his father's second wife were sisters. The family eventually gave up their Mormon connections and moved to Nebraska where the father became a doctor.
   Borglum ended up studying art in Los Angeles. He married his teacher who was 19 years older. The couple travelled and studied art in Europe where Borglum met the great French sculptor,  Rodin, who taught him his light catching tricks. Back in the U.S. Borglum and his wife divorced and he began getting sculpting commissions. Teddy Roosevelt called his statue of General Sheridan in Washington, "First rate."
   Borglum was a member of the KKK. He later denied it, but his membership and nativist views help get him the job sculpting the Confederate heroes on Stone Mountain in Georgia. He finished General Lee, but disputes with the committee got him fired and his General Lee was dynamited off the mountain.
   The South Dakota state historian was looking for a sculptor to carve heroes of the west on a mountain to promote tourism in the Black Hills. Borglum got the job. He substituted the presidents for Lewis and Clark and chose Mt. Rushmore for its excellent granite and south east exposure.
   His first Jefferson was to be to the right of Washington, but the work went poorly, so it was blasted off and Jefferson was moved to Washington's left. Roosevelt came next, then Lincoln. Borglum chose these four because they represented the preservation and expansion of the United States. Susan B. Anthony was to be included, but opposition in Congress but the kibosh on that.
   A visitor center was built in 1957 and the tourists began to come. The visitor center was rebuilt along with a Borglum museum and the whole works, including the carvings, was dedicated by George H. W. Bush in 1991. Mount Rushmore receives over two million visitors a year. Stone Mountain gets four million. But Stone Mountain is only twenty miles from Atlanta, while Mount Rushmore is a long drive from anywhere.

Good thing they started with the heads and not the waistcoats before funding dried up.