Mount Rushmore National Memorial: A Shrine of Democracy

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Mount Rushmore National Memorial: Shrine of Democracy

The carving and construction of Mount Rushmore started on October 4, 1927 when Doane Robinson called in Gutzon Borglum. When South Dakota became a new state, Robinson wanted to create a monument on Stone Mountain to attract tourists. Gutzon Borglum, with the help of his son Lincoln Borglum, immediately knew what and who they wanted to carve; he proposed George Washington and Abraham Lincoln because he wanted those presidents to be remembered and honored. He incorporated methods on how to work with dynamite and pneumatic hammers. Dynamite was used to get the desired measurements and pneumatic hammers were used to get smooth and white surfaces on the granite rocks (“History and Culture”). The workers had to hang over the rocks with cables and shape out the desired facial features. Although this project put the workers in extremely dangerous situations, no lives were lost in the process. These images were first carved out onto a model that would then be sized to a certain ratio in comparison to the mountain size. This allowed the faces to be proportioned correctly when being carved into the large sized rocks. President Washington was carved first and completed on July 4, 1930. The second president to be completed, Thomas Jefferson, was scheduled to be done before Franklin D. Roosevelt came to visit. This masterpiece was finally finished after 14 years of work in 1941. It took approximately 400 workers to carve out the faces of these famous presidents and around $989,992 to get it done.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial stands 5,500 feet above sea level and is located in Keystone, South Dakota. Gutzon Borglum, the creator of the sculpture, stated that this memorial was done to “...

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...ountain and has a view of the four presidential faces. Incorporating a small scene in a movie with Mount Rushmore is a way of advertisement and recognition of its memorial meaning. Other commemorative places it can be found in range from postal stamps and in 2006 South Dakota’s quarter, which depicts the monument on the head side of the coin. The postal stamp was created for the celebration of the 25th year anniversary of the memorial.

The reviews of Mount Rushmore vary, but the majority of the people that have seen it say it’s a great place to visit. It is not a location one would want to plan their whole vacation around because there is only a few activities the memorial has; however, if one drives through South Dakota, then it is a must see. It is a place where spending about half a day is enough to allow one to get the full experience and enjoy the activities.

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