The Mount Rushmore National
Memorial is a sculpture
carved into the granite
face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone,
South Dakota, in the United States. Sculpted by
Danish-American Gutzon
Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, Mount
Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of former United States
presidents (in order from left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The
entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres (5.17 km2) and is 5,725 feet
(1,745 m) above sea level. The tallest mountain in the region is Harney Peak (7,242 ft or
2,207 m).
South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited
with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of
South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the region.
Robinson wanted it to feature
western heroes like Lewis and
Clark, Red Cloud
and Buffalo Bill
Cody but Borglum decided the sculpture should have a more national focus, and
chose the four presidents whose likenesses would be carved into the mountain.
After securing federal funding, construction on the memorial began in 1927, and
the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. Upon Gutzon
Borglum's death in March 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum took over construction.
Although the initial concept called for each president to be depicted from head
to waist, lack of funding forced construction to end in late October 1941.
Photo Legacy: Making your memories last forever www.photolegacy.com
Image courtesy of the National
Archives under the Creative Commons Agreement of Flickr
Research courtesy of Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore
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