Bill Kelleher, age 14, of Salt Lake City, Utah, for his question:
HOW WERE THE FOUR PRESIDENTS ON MOUNT RUSHMORE CHOSEN?
The road leading to South Dakota's Mount Rushmore takes you through a stately park and winds through an area of about two square miles. As you approach the massive granite bluff that contains the memorial, you begin to get the feeling that this is really going to be something special. And when you finally get your first peek of it through the trees, you know you were right.
In 1923 the idea for Mount Rushmore was born in the imagination of Jonah Leroy Robinson, who was superintendent of the South Dakota State Historical Society for many years. B 1925 the concept had been approved by both the federal and South Dakota governments. In October of that year it was dedicated as a national memorial.
The famous American sculptor Gutzon Borglum was selected to design the memorial and supervise its construction. Work on the project began in 1927, and it is a tribute to his engineering genius that the project was completed. The hugeness of the task necessitated that Borglum invent new methods of sculpting.
Four American Presidents were selected as subjects for the sculpture George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Washington was selected to represent our nation's founding; Jefferson, our political philosophy; Lincoln, the preservation of our nation, and Roosevelt, the expansion and conservation of our resources.
The heads of the Presidents are carved on a huge granite cliff that rises 500 feet above the floor of the valley. Each face is about 60 feet from chin to forehead as tall as a five story building. A full size statue built to the same scale would be 465 feet high. More than 400,000 tons of solid rock were blasted and chiseled away to form the memorial. Models, built on the scale of one inch to one foot, were lifted to the edge of the cliff to serve as guides for the workmen.
The head of Washington was completed in 1930, and seven years later the heads of Jefferson and Lincoln were finished. Though not completed, the head of Roosevelt was dedicated in 1939. Work on the project halted in 1941, still leaving it not quite finished. In the 14 years spent on the memorial only six and a half were spent in actual labor due to lack of funds or unfavorable weather. The total cost was just under $1 million.
Gutzon Borglum died in early 1941, leaving his son, Lincoln Borglum, to continue the work. Today, a quarter of a century later, almost 1 million people each year visit Mount Rushmore to marvel at the beauty and greatness of his tribute to the men who helped formulate, shape and strengthen American democracy.