BOISE, Idaho - Few if any of the travelers passing through the eastern Idaho town of St. Charles have giant sculptures on their minds.

Most are focused on recreational opportunities at nearby Bear Lake, the distance to their destinations or the location of the nearest restaurant or convenience store.

Nothing is there to tell them that St. Charles, population 150, is the birthplace of Gutzon Borglum, one of America's most accomplished sculptors.

John Bertram is working to change that.

"Some consider him our foremost sculptor," Bertram said. "There have been efforts to recognize him in Idaho through the years, but as a state we're not very aware of him as a native son."

Born in St. Charles in 1867, Borglum is credited with a number of significant paintings and sculptures - and the one for which he is best known is nothing less than an American icon. The Idaho native son carved the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore.

Bertram, a Boise planner and historian, is working with the city of St. Charles and the Bear Lake Oregon Train Scenic Byway on plans for a stone memorial plaza with a Borglum sculpture as its centerpiece.

"There currently isn't anything to show visitors that he was born there," Bertram said. "There used to be a sandstone historical marker in front of the LDS Church, but it was taken down. It became kind of a mystery where it was.

"It turned out that it was inside City Hall," he said. "When people learned that it was there and the city wanted to restore it, local people raised $6,000 to do it. That's great, grass-roots support in a city that size, but the Byway thought it was time for a larger way to commemorate one of our great artists."

The restored historical marker is planned to be an element in the plaza, which also would include a recast, seven-foot bronze statue of Borglum and his son Lincoln, stone obelisks, interpretive signs and benches and a small, bronze replica of Mount Rushmore. Fundraising efforts have just begun, with completion of the $174,000 memorial targeted for next year.

The man it would honor was born in a log cabin - remnants of it still exist in St. Charles - after his Danish-immigrant parents were caught in a winter blizzard there.

The family left Idaho when he was about a year old, but he was "very proud of where he was born," said his granddaughter, Robin Borglum Carter of Corpus Christi, Texas. "He always went back to his Western roots and the fact that he was born in the West and raised in rural surroundings."

A Mormon convert, Borglum's father married two sisters. More than 20 years would pass before the church banned polygamy, but he soon tired of the sisters' rivalries, moved the family to the Midwest and effectively banished the younger sister, Gutzon's mother, from the family.

The rebel and future artist ran away from home many times, leaving for good when he was about 17. He studied art in San Francisco, married his mentor and spent a number of years in Europe, where he became a disciple of French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Returning to America, Borglum built his reputation by placing his work in prestigious locations and pioneering sculpture on a grand scale. He became famous for sculpting Civil War heroes, war memorials, horses, women and presidents, especially Abraham Lincoln.

"One very interesting fact is that my grandfather started Mount Rushmore when he was 60," Carter said. "He was a very well-known artist long before that. Mount Rushmore is what he's remembered for, yet in a way it's one of the least artistic of his works.

"His artistic legacy took a back seat to Mount Rushmore, but he had a whole body of work," she said. "He had paintings and statues all over the country that in terms of artistic merits were better than Mount Rushmore. It was an engineering feat and a fabulous structure, but artistically he did a lot of things that were better."

Examples of Borglum's work can be found throughout the country, including three of Idaho's neighboring states.

"His pieces are all around us in the West, but there's nothing in his native state," Bertram said. "We hope to fix that with the memorial, as well as to encourage Idahoans to stop there and learn about him."

In addition to being famous for his art, Borglum was one of the best-connected and influential Idaho natives ever. He had direct access to seven presidents during his lifetime. His activism on a variety of public issues placed him in constant demand as a speaker, and occasionally in hot water. He was known for being outspoken, passionate, controversial.

Other than his wives, the person to whom he was closest was his son Lincoln, named for the president that inspired so much of his art. Lincoln Borglum, Carter's father, worked on Mount Rushmore both with his father and after his death.

"My grandfather died a month before I was born, but from my father I gathered that he was extremely intelligent, dynamic and interested in lots of things," Carter said. "He wasn't just interested in art; he was interested in politics, books and everything that came around.

"He got involved with senators who were trying to get highways going across America in the 1930s. He wanted to put a a Christ statue in the bay here in Corpus Christi, even though he didn't live here. Wherever he went, he became immersed in how to make things more beautiful and better."

Bertram envisions a Borglum memorial in St. Charles promoting tourism as part of a four-state travel initiative that includes Idaho and South Dakota, where Mount Rushmore is located.

"I'd like to think that over time this would be a way that eastern Idaho would benefit from the arts," he said.

That would suit longtime St. Charles resident Janene Pugmire just fine.

"It's something that needs to be done," she said. "We need to honor Gutzon Borglum for all the work he did. We have an annual Butch Cassidy festival in Montpelier, and I think we need to do something to promote someone who did something besides rob banks. Tourists are what will keep this valley going. A Borglum memorial would be terrific for St. Charles."