Construction of Mount Rushmore

Common card · No. 352437

The construction of Mount Rushmore National Memorial began on October 4, 1927, and took 14 years to complete. The sculptor of the memorial was Gutzon Borglum, the son of Danish immigrants. He chose the two most famous presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and chose Thomas Jefferson because of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase (which included the land that became South Dakota). Theodore Roosevelt was suggested by United States president Calvin Coolidge. Borglum's original design was intended to go down to their waists, but aside from the Washington sculpture time constraints and funding only provided for their heads. Borglum also envisaged other grand extensions to his plan, but a combination of hard granite, looming war in Europe, and lack of funding conspired against him. His team had reached 70 feet into the granite by March 1941, when Borglum unexpectedly died. The monument was deemed complete and all work shut down on October 31 of the same year. In 1998, a titanium vault was...

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