A MONUMENT COMMEMORATING THE CONCEPTION, PRESERVATION, AND GROWTH OF THE GREAT AMERICAN REPUBLIC PUBLISHED BY THE Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills 1948 GUTZON BORGLUM...

A monument’s dimensions should be determined by the importance to civilization of the events commemorated. We are not here trying to carve an epic, portray a moonlight scene, or write a sonnet; neither are we dealing with mystery or tragedy, but rather the constructive and the dramatic moments or crises in our amazing history. We are cool-headedly, clear-mindedly setting down a few crucial, epochal facts regarding the accomplishments of the Old World radicals who shook the shackles of oppression

How big is great? How high is up? In the wide and numberless fields of creative art, size is a matter of spirit rather than of material bulk. A sonnet may be a masterpiece, and an epic rubbish; or an epic may be sublime, a sonnet petty. It is only affectation to confine one’s praise to small things. Because a poet delights in a brook chuckling through a thicket of birches he need not therefore despise Niagara. The word “colossal” should not be surrendered entirely to the advertisers. The Shakesp

A nation’s memorials are a record of its civilization and the artist who builds them is the instrument of his time. He is inspired by the same forces that influence the nation’s destiny—the greater the period, the greater the art. The artist cannot escape his destiny. Like the “Hound of Heaven” it “pursues him down the years,” forces him to leave his home, to go into exile, to combat mountains even, to accomplish what must be. How else can we explain why a man should abandon a comfortable way of

Wind Cave is the most widely known of the many limestone caverns found near the margin of the Black Hills. Discovered in 1881, it was created a national park in 1903. The strong currents of wind that blow alternately in and out of the mouth of the cave suggested its name. Boundaries of the park were extended twice and now embrace a total of 28,000 acres of federally-owned land, supporting a large buffalo herd in its natural habitat and other wildlife, such as elk, antelope, and deer. Chief featu

In sharp contrast to the verdant Black Hills country, the White River Badlands, a barren, treeless region, lies about 50 miles east of the western foothills. Here nature has beautified the earth with all shades of buff, cream, pale green, gold, and rose. Fantastically carved erosion forms rise above the valleys, some of them 150 to 300 feet high. The constantly shifting color and the weird formations make this a region of strong imaginative appeal....

A unique coating of dogtooth calcite crystals which sparkle like jewels in the light distinguish Jewel Cave from other crystal caverns in the Black Hills and provided its name. One of the finest stands of virgin ponderosa pine remaining in the Black Hills is found within the monument which was established in 1908. It was originally part of the present Harney National Forest but was transferred to the National Park Service, by Executive Order, in 1934....

Another unusual natural phenomenon of the Black Hills country is the Devils Tower across the South Dakota state line in Wyoming. This is a great column of igneous rock towering 1,280 feet above the Belle Fourche river, whose course is near the base. Devils Tower has the distinction of being the first national monument created under the Antiquities Act of 1906. It was established by proclamation of September 24 of that year, by President Theodore Roosevelt. Devils Tower in Wyoming’s western borde

At the Battle of the Pyramids, Napoleon is reported to have exhorted his men by saying, “Soldiers, from these pyramids forty centuries look down upon you.” From the standpoint of human history four thousand years represent great antiquity indeed. But as one gazes upon the rugged slopes of Mount Rushmore, he is face to face with antiquity beside which the age of the Egyptian pyramids seems but a moment. How old is the granite of Rushmore? We have a yardstick by which we can measure that quite acc

The Hall of Records and Stairway have been part of the Memorial plan from the beginning and are provided for in the so-called “Rushmore Bill” of 1938. A good start has been made in the carving of the Hall, which already has been excavated to the extent of seventy feet. Great care has to be exercised in the use of dynamite in carving this hall, as in carving the faces on the mountain, not to injure the stone which is to remain. Careless explosions of large amounts of powder might crumble the wall

In carving the head of George Washington, Mr. Borglum studied all the known portraits of him and drew heavily on certain famous likenesses which he preferred because he believed them most faithful to the character of the man. Borglum was confronted by an extraordinary problem. He had undertaken to place his sculpture on a mountain peak over 6000 feet above sea level. His face of Washington, tall as a five-story building, was to be far up in the sky “where the clouds fold about it like a great sc

Writing just a century ago, and a few years after Jefferson’s death, one of his earliest biographers said that it had been that statesman’s fate “to be at once loved and praised by his friends, and more hated and reviled by his adversaries than any of his compatriots.” The fact that much the same could be said of the writing about him today merely shows that the man is still alive in so far as his influence is both felt and feared. So is his great antagonist Hamilton. These two exponents of cont

Carlyle once said to Holman Hunt: “I’m only a poor man, but I would give one third of what I possess for a veritable, contemporaneous representation of Jesus Christ. Had those carvers of marble chiseled a faithful statue of the Son of Man, as he called himself, and shown us what manner of man he was like, what his height, what his build, and what the features of his sorrow-marked face were, I for one would have thanked the sculptor with all the gratitude of my heart for that portrait as one of t

Fromentin said of Peter Paul Rubens, one of the greatest masters who ever used brush and paint to interpret human character: “He is systematic, methodical and stern in the discipline of his private life, in the ordering of his work, in the regulating of his intelligence, in a kind of strong and sane wholesomeness of his genius. He is simple, sincere, a model of loyalty to his friends, in sympathy with every one of talent, (and) untiring and resourceful in his encouragement of beginners * * *.” T

Excerpts from speeches at dedicatory and unveiling ceremonies or comments made during personal visits to the Memorial. President Calvin Coolidge (Consecration Ceremony, August 10, 1927) “We have come here to dedicate a corner stone that was laid by the hand of the Almighty.... This memorial will be another national shrine to which future generations will repair to declare their continuing allegiance to independence, to self government, to freedom and to economic justice....” President Franklin D

John A. Boland, Sr. President of Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills The state of South Dakota and the community of the Black Hills have logically and with undiminished zeal accepted a considerable financial and moral responsibility in the evolution of this magnificent Shrine of Democracy. Through the successive stages of locating, planning, sculptoring, improving and publicizing Mount Rushmore, a liaison with Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln, the President, the C