Unfinished Faces on Mt. Rushmore Will Last Many Millennia

Carving the likenesses of four U.S. presidents into the granite mountain of Mt. Rushmore began in 1927. The 60-foot faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were carved into the granite mountain to attract tourists to the scenic Black Hills of South Dakota.

After 14 years of delays and restarts on the massive project, the Mt. Rushmore carving was dedicated in its uncompleted condition on October 31, 1941. Interest in raising money to finish the massive carving stopped when the United States joined World War II five weeks later.  

Original plans showed that each president’s image would be carved from head to waist. The stone carvers stopped working after completing most details of the faces of the four presidents.  A carved outline of the shoulders and chest for the Washington figure is visible on the mountain. The faces of the four presidents are remarkably accurate in their details, but Lincoln’s likeness has extra stone above his head, looking somewhat like a helmet. And Lincoln’s head has no left ear.

The actual productive work time was about eight years. Delays came repeatedly, and work stopped and later restarted when money to pay the hundreds of workers kept running out. Project officials traveled outside South Dakota to raise money to keep the work going. The delays extended the project by approximately six years.

One major setback occurred during the first part of construction. The head of Jefferson was originally set to be on the left side of Washington. After 18 months of work, the architects decided that the granite on that part of the mountain was poor quality and would not support Jefferson’s figure. The work of a year and a half was blasted away, and Jefferson’s likeness was moved to the right of Washington.

Doane Robinson was the brainchild of the project. He was South Dakota’s official historian. Robinson worked to promote tourism for the state, and he wanted to develop South Dakota’s Black Hills mountain range into a vacation spot. He thought that the Black Hills would draw visitors from all over the world to experience camping and hiking in the dense pine forests. He believed that a spectacular, one-of-a-kind attraction was needed to bring visitors to his state.

Robinson visited a Civil War memorial that was being carved into a cliff face on a huge piece of granite in Georgia during the early 1920s. He was inspired by the project in Stone Mountain, GA, and thought carvings of numerous American heroes could be cut into granite spires that appeared throughout forests of the Black Hills.

Robinson contacted Gutzon Borgham, the sculptor in charge of carving the Civil War memorial. The two men met in 1924, and Borgham immediately agreed to create a sculpture on the scale of the Georgia monument. Borgham had serious disagreements with members of the Georgia commission in charge of that state’s Civil War memorial. And he welcomed the opportunity to leave the Georgia project.

Borgham had already carved the outlines of the Confederate Army figures into the Georgia Mountain. But state officials didn’t like the looks or the positioning of the southern military figures. Two years later, Borgham resigned from the Georgia project and started working on Mt. Rushmore. His initial Civil War design was drilled off Stone Mountain, and a new rendering was carved several feet higher on Georgia’s granite mountain.

The South Dakota delays and disagreements began immediately as Robinson and Borgham argued about which heroes they wanted to depict and the location in the Black Hills. Robinson originally planned to place the carved faces of many American heroes and pioneers onto several granite towers located miles away from Mt. Rushmore.

Borgham insisted on limiting the subjects to four U.S. presidents. In 1927, the chief architect/sculptor began carving on the southeastern, flat face of the mountain called Rushmore. Borgham said the location allowed the rising sun to illuminate the carvings.

Visitors during the first years of the massive Mr. Rushmore project heard explosions and no drilling or carving noises from the granite surface. The workforce used dynamite to clear 90% of the rock before detailed carving of the faces began. After blasting away tons of rock, work crews used pneumatic tools to drill close rows of holes into the granite. Called honeycombing, the holes let the skilled carvers chip away the granite with hand tools.

More than 400 people worked in specialized teams. One group of men on the top of the mountain hand cranked individuals up and down the 500 foot cliff in bosun chairs. The chairs weren’t more than small boards that were suspended by 3/8^th inch steel cables, allowing the workers freedom of movement. Men were lowered and raised hundreds of times throughout the work days, depending on weather conditions. Working several hundred feet off the ground with dynamite and precarious equipment could have resulted in several fatal accidents. Surprising, no one died while working on the monument.

Explosive experts were the first laborers to dominate the cliff face. A basic outline of each head was revealed during the first years of blasting tons of rock off the mountain. Men carrying drills created the honeycomb features of the faces. Skilled rock carvers came next to accomplish the tedious work of chipping away the rock with hand tools and revealing the rough features of each president.

Skilled carvers then polished the facial features, leaving the four faces with smooth surfaces. A preservative containing silicone and granite powder covers the faces and helps slow the natural erosion without affecting the natural color of the rock.

Studies done by geologists indicate the monument could bring in visitors for a very long time. Erosion will fade the presidents’ faces in about 500,000 years. And the inevitable wearing away of the rock will make the faces unrecognizable after the next 2.5 million years.

Funding for the massive project came from government money and public contributions. A grant of $250,000 came from the U.S. Congress. That created the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial Commission that controlled the money used in the project. Many of the delays during the total 14 years taken to build Mt. Rushmore came after work was stopped while Borgham traveled across the country seeking contributions.

The Memorial Commission reported $989,992.32 was used to construct the monument up to its dedication in 1941. How the commission kept such accurate records down to the last thirty-two cents is incredible. Money from visitors and South Dakota taxes keep the monument open today.

Robinson’s vision to create something to attract visitors to South Dakota became a reality. The state visitor’s bureau reports that more than 3 million tourists visit Mt. Rushmore each year.