Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore National Memorial
IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape)
Location	South Dakota, USA
Nearest city	Rapid City, SD
Area	1,278.45 acres (5.17 km²)
Established	March 3, 1925
Visitors	2,037,820 (in 2004)
Governing body	National Park Service

For the 1960s rock band, see Mount Rushmore (band).

Mount Rushmore National Memorial, near Keystone, South Dakota, is a United States Presidential Memorial that memorializes the birth, growth, preservation, and development of the United States of America. The entire memorial covers 1,278 acres (518 hectares), and is 5,725 ft (1745 m) in altitude.. It is managed by the National Park Service. The carved faces of former U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln are on the southeast face of the mountain. The memorial attracts around 2.7 million people annually.

The mountain was named after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer, in 1885. The project of carving Mount Rushmore originally started with the purpose of increasing tourism in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. After long negotiations involving a Congressional delegation and president Calvin Coolidge, the project received Congressional approval. The actual carving started in 1927 and ended in 1941.

History

(left to right) Sculptures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 150 years of American history.

The carving of Mount Rushmore involved the use of dynamite and then the process of "honeycombing".

Doane Robinson, a historian, conceived of the idea for Mount Rushmore in 1923 in order to attract people to South Dakota. In 1924, Robinson convinced sculptor Gutzon Borglum to go to the Black Hills region to ensure that the carving could be accomplished. The original plan to do the carvings in the Needles, several granite pillars, was precluded due to weathering, but Mount Rushmore turned out to be a good spot. Borglum said upon seeing Mount Rushmore, "America will march along that skyline." Congress authorized the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission on March 3, 1925. President Coolidge insisted that along with Washington two Republicans and one Democrat be portrayed.

Between October 4, 1927 and October 31, 1941, Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers sculpted the 60 ft (18 m) colossal carvings of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 150 years of American history. These presidents were selected by Borglum because of their national focus.

In 1933, the National Park Service took Mount Rushmore under its jurisdiction. Engineer Julian Spotts helped with the project by improving the tram to reach the top of Mount Rushmore for easy use by workers. By July 4, 1934, Washington's face had been completed and was dedicated. The face of Thomas Jefferson was dedicated in 1936, and the face of Abraham Lincoln was dedicated on September 17, 1937. In 1937, a bill was introduced in Congress to add the head of Susan B. Anthony, but a rider was passed on an appropriations bill requiring that federal funds be used to finish only those heads that had already been started at that time. In 1939, the face of Theodore Roosevelt was dedicated.

Visitors to the memorial come primarily to view the granite sculpture itself, but also of interest was the Sculptor's Studio built in 1939 under the direction of the artist, Gutzon Borglum. Unique plaster models and tools related to the sculpting process are displayed there. Borglum died from an embolism in March of 1941. His son, Lincoln Borgulm, continued the project, but insufficient funding forced the carving to end. Originally, it was planned that the sculpture would go from head to waist. The entire project had cost $989,992.32.

On October 15, 1966, Mount Rushmore was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1991, President George Bush officially dedicated Mount Rushmore.

Ten years of redevelopment work culminated with the completion of extensive new visitor facilities and sidewalks. These include a new Visitor Center and Museum and the Presidential Trail, a walking trail and boardwalk providing spectacular close-up views of the mountain sculpture. Maintenance of the memorial presents a unique challenge for conservators, sometimes requiring mountain climbing to remove lichens and to generally clean the memorial. On July 8, 2005, Alfred Kärcher GmbH, a German manufacturer of cleaning machines, conducted a cleanup operation of the faces by pressure washing for free. The washing took place by using pressurized water that was around 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ecology

The Black Hills

The flora and fauna of Mount Rushmore are similar to those of the rest of the Black Hills area of South Dakota. The memorial serves as home to many animals and plants representative of the Black Hills. Several birds like the turkey vulture, bald eagle, hawk, and meadowlark fly around and inhabit the Black Hills area. Terrestrial animals include the chipmunk, squirrel, skunk, porcupine, raccoon, beaver, badger, coyote, and bobcat. Several endemic animals are not indigenous to the area; the bighorn sheep originated in Canada, and the Rocky Mountain goat was introduced to replace the extinct population of Audubon sheep.

Coniferous trees, mainly the Ponderosa pine, surround most of the monument, and shade the trails from the hot South Dakota sun. Other trees include the bur oak and the Black Hills spruce. Nine species of shrubs live near Mount Rushmore. There is also a wide variety of wildflowers, including most commonly the snapdragon, sunflower, and violet. However, only approximately 5% of the plant species found in the Black Hills were indigenous to the region.

Geology

Mount Rushmore is largely composed of granite. The memorial is carved on the northwest margin of the Harney Peak granite batholith in the Black Hills of South Dakota, so the geologic formations of the heart of the Black Hills region are also evident at Mount Rushmore. The batholith magma intruded into the pre-existing mica schist rocks during the Precambrian period about 1.6 billion years ago. However, the uneven cooling of the molten rock caused the formation of both fine and coarse-grained minerals, including quartz, feldspar, muscovite, and biotite. Fractures in the granite were filled (and sealed) by pegmatite dikes. The light colored streaks in the presidents' foreheads are due to these dikes.

Mt Rushmore, showing full size of mountain.

The Black Hills granites were exposed to erosion during the late Precambrian, but were buried by sandstones and other sediments during the Cambrian Period. The area remained buried throughout the Paleozoic Era, but were exposed again to erosion during the tectonic uplift about 70 million years ago. The Black Hills area was uplifted as an elongated geologic dome which towered some 20,000 ft (6 km) above sea level, but erosion wore the area down to only 4,000 ft (1.2 km). The subsequent natural erosion of this mountain range allowed the carvings by stripping the granite of the overlying sediments and the softer adjacent schists. The contact between the granite and darker schist is viewable just below the sculpture of Washington.

Geology dictated Borglum's site selection because of several factors. The rock was composed of smooth, homogeneous, fine-grained granite, which was very resistant, only eroding about 1 inch every 10,000 years. With a 5,725 ft (1745 m) height, Mount Rushmore was the tallest mountain in the surrounding terrain. The mountain has a southeast exposure, so it faced the sun most of the day.

Appearances

Because of the carved faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore, many appearances of Mount Rushmore in the media include a replacement of the four presidents' faces with other characters. In addition, its importance as a historical landmark often causes it to become a base for different action-themed movies and books.

Film

• The memorial was famously used as the location of the final chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest (the closeups were shot on a set, as permission to shoot an attempted killing on the face of a national monument was refused by the Park Service).
  • In the Family Guy episode "North by North Quahog", Peter and Lois are chased down the monument by Mel Gibson after stealing a copy of his new movie, "Passion Of The Christ 2: Crucify This" in a spoof of the chase scene from Hitchcock's "North by Northwest".
• Mount Rushmore is featured in Team America: World Police as the Team America headquarters which was destroyed by Michael Moore's suicide bomb.
• In Superman II, General Zod and his partners in crime deface the memorial, using their superpowers to replace three of the carvings with their own faces and wipe out the fourth.
• In Mars Attacks!, the Martians in a UFO carve their faces into Mount Rushmore, replacing the Presidents' heads.

Music

• Deep Purple's album, In Rock, has the cover inspired by Mount Rushmore: it depicts the five members' faces instead of the four presidents.
• Mount Rushmore was a 1960s rock music band.

Print

• In the Red Dwarf novel Better Than Life, Dave Lister finds Mt Rushmore (half-buried) on a planet entirely covered with garbage, and realizes he is in fact back on Earth. The mountain has had a fifth face carved into it: that of "possibly the greatest American President of all time, Elaine Salinger".
• William Dembski uses the Mt. Rushmore Memorial as an example of an object that can be recognized as a product of Intelligent design.
• In Wildstorm Comics, the alien superhero Mr. Majestic has his secret base inside Mount Rushmore.

Further reading

• Mount Rushmore Geology and more - American Park Network
• The National Parks: Index 2001-2003. Washington: U.S. Department of the Interior.

See also

• Crazy Horse Memorial

External links

• The Making of Mount Rushmore
• Photographic virtual tour of Mount Rushmore National Memorial

43°52′44″N 103°27′33″W