A short primer on why those four guys are on Mount Rushmore

By the Rapid City Journal Editorial Board | Monday, February 19, 2007

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Today is Presidents Day, which seems an appropriate time for a little history lesson.

The third Monday of February in general commemorates all men who have been U.S. presidents, but specifically honors the first president, George Washington, who was born Feb. 22, 1732, and the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, born Feb. 12, 1809.

Washington and Lincoln have special significance in South Dakota because, along with Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, their faces are carved in the granite atop Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

And here’s the question of the day: Why were those four men chosen for the mountain sculpture? The pages of Gilbert C. Fite’s 1952 book, “Mount Rushmore,” provide the answer:

State historian Doane Robinson conceived the idea of carving a giant monument in the Black Hills in 1923, and enlisted the support of U.S. Sen. Peter Norbeck, the leading advocate of park and game development in the Black Hills at the time.

The next year Robinson pitched the idea to sculptor Gutzon Borglum, of Georgia’s Stone Mountain fame, and Borglum visited the Black Hills on Sept. 24, 1924. He suggested creating giant statues of Washington and Lincoln, America’s most-revered presidents, and possibly “other figures,” but Robinson also wanted each sculpture carved in the round on a separate granite spire in the Needles.

The “in the round” idea in the Needles was abandoned in 1925, and by then Norbeck had insisted on adding Roosevelt to the list, largely because of the 26th president’s close connection to the West.

Jefferson, the nation’s third president, was added at Borglum’s urging. He said Jefferson approved the Louisiana Purchase (of which what is now South Dakota was part), and typified the spirit of American’s continental growth.

In August 1925, state forester Theodore Shoemaker guided Borglum and others, all on horseback, into the remote area around Harney Peak, eventually to a 6,000-feet high mountain capped with a granite head about 1,000 feet long and 400 feet high — Mount Rushmore.

The rest is history.

President Calvin Coolidge dedicated the carving on Aug. 10, 1927, the first drilling began on Oct. 4, 1927, and the last work was done on Oct. 31, 1941.

Class dismissed.