Techman
05-29-2008, 11:53 PM
Shawn Scates
Mrs. Riddle
College Bound English
April 14, 2008
Mount Rushmore
In generations past, was it not our forefathers who gave us our freedom? Was it not our forefathers who fought for our rights?
In today’s world, or even the world of tomorrow, how will anyone remember our past heros, except if we happen to glance through a history book? How will people be able to identify themselves with past individuals like Benjamin Franklin?
To be more specific, who are our past heroes and how can we identify ourselves with them? We can always read about them, but with a growing nation and people tearing themselves away from books, and looking for a faster way to do something, how can we associate ourselves with them when they had great patience? It is suggested that the best way would to be just go visit a shrine or memorial of them. Such memorials can be found in our nation’s capital, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, New York, or even in the Midwest states (Atlas)
In the Midwest, many states play home to shrines and memorials that we all see and hear about all the time, but one in particular stations itself in the Black Hills of South Dakota (Atlas of America). The monument itself is “23 miles from Rapid City, [and] serves as home to many animals and plants representative of the Black Hills of South Dakota” (JnM Design). So, what exactly is Mount Rushmore? Mount Rushmore is a monument known to people as a structure with four of America’s past president’s face on it, but its more than that. It is a monument made to preserve the past and to celebrate the heroes of the United States’ first one-hundred fifty years of freedom (Black Hills).
Now, since there isn’t really a way that four faces could be carved into a mountain could show up on there own, it has to have a creator, and that creator is Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum. Gutzon’s middle name, ‘de la Mothe, means ‘the one with courage’ in French” (Krystel).
Gutzon Borglum “was a man of great imagination. An American sculptor, he was known for his political statues carves into natural rock formations” (Krystel). Gutzon himself has an interesting background that brings him close to us ere at home, whereas the mountain itself has one that takes us on a real adventure.
The mountain, to make a long story short, has been around for nearly six hundred-thousand centuries, was actually named Mount Rushmore on a “crisp, clear morning in 1885" (Curlee, 7) by a New York lawyer named Charles E. Rushmore. Gutzon’s upbringing, however, has led him to many schools to study art. “As a child, education was stressed in the house, and Borglum was sent to St. Mary’s College in Kansas,” and even to Paris, France. (Krystle)
Before Borglum was commissioned to begin his most famous work, he was hired “to execute an image of General Robert. E. Lee (1807-1870) for the face of Stone Mountain in Georgia, by a group of Southern Women” (Krystle). Borglum had a vision of what he wanted, but the women wanted it to be an isolated figure. Borglum was displeased, and he was even taken to court. He won the court case, but later he was dismissed from the project (Krystel)
Originally, “it was Doane Robinson, [a] state historian for South Dakota, [at the time], who first had the idea of carving figures in the Black Hills” (Curlee, 10). He had proposed that the figures be sculpted into spires known as the “Needles” to commemorate American history by placing heroes faces into the structure.
After gaining the approval from the Governor, he needed to find someone to support his idea financially. He met with Senator Peter Norbeck to discuss the issue. Senator Norbeck made way to Washington D.C. to try and gain approval for such funding, and with success, he returned to South Dakota to give Robinson the good news.
In August 1924, Borglum was at the age of fifty-seven and was in the midst of working on another project at the time when he received a letter from Robinson. The letter read:
“Mr. Gutzon Borglum
Stone Mountain, Georgia
Dear Mr. Borglum:
In the vicinity of Harney Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota are opportunities for heroic sculpture of unusual character. Would it be possible for you to design and supervise a massive sculpture?” (Curlee, 11)
When Borglum got to South Dakota, Robinson told Borglum that the carvings should represent men in America history rather than people from the Old West, which had been originally suggested. Even with sketches of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln carved into the spires of the “Needles”, Borglum didn’t think that the sculpture should be located there. The idea of the sculpture being carved into the “Needles” also brought about much controversy to the area, besides that of Borglum’s. Many agreed that the “Needles” were too beautiful and natural to be carved into by any man, no matter how great of a sculptor he may be. One critic felt so strong about the idea that the critic wrote “Man makes statues but God made the ‘Needle.’ Let them alone” (Curlee, 16). This brought about Borglum’s inner desire to search for the perfect location for this massive sculpture.
“He left and returned next year. It was on Borglum's second trip that he found Mt. Rushmore August 13, 1925. Next, Borglum and his party climbed Harney Peak. At 7,242 feet, this is the highest point between the Rockies and the Swiss Alps. The surrounding vista inspired him. [After finding this location, he said] ‘here is the place! . . . American history shall march along that skyline" (APN).
Since this was a new location, and it was on the land of Harney National Forest, “Senator Norbeck and [fellow] congressman William Williamson” (APN) needed to gain approval to build the structure. In 1925, a bill easily passed through both the federal and the state’s legislature.
During the two years that would pass before the beginning of the actual sculpting, Borglum brought in workers to set up a headquarters and housing for the near four-hundred men that would be working for him. Also, during this two-year period, President Calvin Coolidge, the First Lady, their two dogs, and the First Lady’s pet raccoon were urged to make a visit during a vacation. (APN)
On June 15, 1927, Senator Norbeck and approximately ten-thousand South Dakotans warmly greeted the President and First Lady as they stepped down from their train in Rapid City. They were soon settled comfortably into the Game Lodge and the Dakotan way of life. Their three-week visit turned into a three-month fishing trip for President Coolidge, whom was learning to fish for the trout that was shipped in over night to the local river (APN).
During the three-month stay of President Coolidge, Borglum took it upon himself to decide whom he would place on the mountain. It was pretty obvious who the first two were, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but who would he place up there with them? Tension was rising with time dwindling, but Borglum with his quick thinking abilities came up with two more, Thomas Jefferson and the much criticed Theodore Roosevlet.
Borglum selected these men for the following reasons:
George Washington was the United States’ first President. He led the first army of the United States during the Revolutionary War, and he had set many presidents for future political life in our current political system.
Abraham Lincoln was chosen for his great leadership skills during the Civil War, his composure at Gettysburg while giving his speech that was written on the train ride to Gettysburg. He ended slavery in the United States with the Emancipation Proclamation, and he reunited the United States after the Civil War was over.
Thomas Jefferson was selected not because he was a President, but because of his role in helping free America from Great Britain. He authored the Declaration of Independence, made a purchase from France that more than doubled the United States, and his belief in education (Gabriel, 18).
“Borglum believed Roosevelt’s vision of America’s role in the world community qualified him for the fourth place on the mountain. Roosevelt had realized the dream of Christopher Columbus by completing the Panama Canal and connecting the waters of the Atlantic [Ocean] and Pacific [Ocean]” (APN).
Borglum’s next task was to design the layout for this near impossible project he set out to concur. He started the layout with several detailed sketches and began making small, to scale models of the monument as he had pictured it. It took several tries, but Borglum finalized his model with plaster, and now he needed to find a way to accurately project the model onto the mountain (Gabriel, 21).
To solve the problem of accuracy, “Gutzon invented a measuring tool to measure the model exactly. He measured the noses, ears, eyes, and other features of each face. Gutzon then placed a giant measuring tool on top of Mount Rushmore. He used this tool to mark the exact location of each part of the mountain to be carved. Gutzon and other workers hung from ropes and put marks on the mountain” (Gabriel, 21). “On October 4, 1927, the first crew of workmen began attacking the granite with their drills” (Curlee, 21), marking the official beginning of the carving of Mount Rushmore.
“In the six-and-a-half years of work that occurred on and off between 1927 and 1941, Borglum employed almost 400 local workers. Some built roads, ran the hoist house, generated power or sharpened thousands of bits for the pneumatic drills. Others set dynamite charges or completed delicate finishing work on the sculpture. Among the most highly skilled workers were those using dynamite. Using techniques he had developed at Stone Mountain and relying on skills his crew had acquired in mining, Borglum used the explosive in an innovative way that helped to remove large amounts of rock quickly and relatively inexpensively. His powder men became so skilled that they could blast to within four inches of the finished surface and grade the contours of the lips, nose, cheeks, neck and brow” (APN).
Although it may seem that the project that now consumed Gutzon was well underway and it appeared that it was going to be finished in no time at all, America sunk deep into The Great Depression that swept across the globe. So, with The Great Depression on hand, money was short in supply and construction on the mountain was halted for long periods of time.
Independence day came in the year of 1930 and America was still in the midst of The Great Depression, but in the words of Gutzon Borglum, “Let us place there, carved high as close to heaven as we can . . . their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away;” (JnM Design) brought some meaningful hope back to the workers, still working under Gutzon, to endure the hardships.
“Sometimes Borglum was forced to change his plans. In June 1931, as work continued on Washington, blasting began for Thomas Jefferson, but not the face we see today. In the original design, Jefferson was on Washington’s right-hand side, not his left. As work progressed and more of the rock was removed, the stone underneath was revealed to be faulty and unsuitable for carving. It must have been an agonizing decision for Borglum to change his design so radically, but he had no choice but to blast away the original Jefferson in 1934, and start again on the other side of Washington. But even the new Jefferson game Borglum some problems. This part of the granite contained veins of quartz, which were potential cracks. Borglum said that he had no intention of making a statue which might be missing a nose in a few hundred years, so he had to keep shifting the head’s position as he blasted, until he found the best part of the rock. Even then, Jefferson’s lip required a granite plug to patch a defect in the stone” (Curlee, 33).
Since the project began in 1927, there were no minimum wage laws that restricted how much a worker was paid, but while working on this mountain, a skilled driller could make one dollar and twenty-five cents per hour on the project which was better than the mines were paying” (APN). In today’s world, the one dollar and twenty-five cents per hour wouldn’t mean much to anyone because they would know that would be a major ripoff, but with wage inflation having taken affect, that one dollar and twenty-five cents per hour would be closer to fourteen dollars and sixty-four cents an hour (Tom’s Calc.)
By the late 1930s, the project was coming along at a nice fast pace, and the project was nicely funded by Congress. But like anything that goes right, some more things went wrong. Borglum ran into a snag when, like with Jefferson, Roosevelt’s head had to fall back further into the mountain because of faulty granite quality. In most part, Roosevelt’s head is so far back into the mountain that it was carved on a thin slab of rock only thirty feet thick (Curlle, 37)
In 1938, Burglum was given full administrative control over the whole project. This ment he didn’t have to consult someone everytime he needed to fix or add something to the mountain. This also led way to his son joining the work by transferring his Borglum’s thoughts onto th mountain as every day work.
Now that he had full control, he began “excavation of the great room in the mountain for Burglum’s Hall of Records” (Curlee, 38) That next year, the unveiling of Roosevelt’s head was held, but for two more years the crew contiinued their work on the mountain.
“On March 6, 1941, three weeks after a surgical procedure, Gutzon Borglum died in Chicago of a heart attack. Vigerous until the end, he was seventy-four years old at his death, although he had claimed to be only sixty-nine” (Curlee, 39-41).
Gutzon Borglum, a man with a vision of large patriotic works, died one week after learning that funding for the mountain was to be cut off due to the outbreak of war in Europe and the slight possibility that America would have to join. Continueing what was left to be finished with the mountain, Borglum’s son Lincoln, used what money was left to finish what he could. “October 31, 1941, was the last day of work on the mountain. Thirty-seven days later, . . . , the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered World War II” (Curlee, 41).
Over the fourteen year span that it took to finish the mountain, nearly eight-hundred million pounds of granite was removed, and about ninety percent of it was removed using dynamite. With the many workers that Borglum had from day one, none had lost their life, and you would figure a project this big would cost a lot of money. No. It only cost about one million dollars, and that was just in 1927. Today it would be worth eleven-million seven-hundred-sixteen-thousand seven-hundred five dollars and eighty-three cents.
Throughout the course of Mount Rushmore’s extensive history, there has really only been one man who made it come to life. He built it with the blueprints on his mind and workers at hand. Even though he died before it was finished, he is still remembered today as one of the greatest sculptors in American history.
Borglum chose the faces, and most just pass them by or say “who cares” or “so . . . they should put current heroes up there.” I’m sure if Borglum was still alive, he would take on the feat of sculpting a “Modern Rushmore.” All that it comes down to in the end is that "Mount Rushmore is a memorial that symbolizes America, and Americans should never lose sight of their cultural beginnings" {Gerard Baker} (NPS).
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