Each year, about 2 million people flock to see the four famous faces carved into Mount Rushmore. But few visitors may be aware that a mysterious rectangular opening hides behind President Abraham Lincoln’s image.
Blasted into the mountainside, that passageway is closed to the public; it’s a vestige of a planned feature that was never completed.
Inside, a titanium vault holds 16 porcelain-enamel panels inscribed with information about the monument. It was “left as a record for people thousands of years from now who may wonder how and why Mount Rushmore was carved,” a National Park Service webpage says.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, which has stood for almost 85 years so far, was fraught with so many setbacks that South Dakota State Historian Ben Jones marvels over “the fact that it exists at all.”
“Just the story of how it came into existence is fascinating to me, as a historian and as a South Dakotan,” Jones told The Epoch Times. “The grandness of the setting is also compelling.”
Nestled in the scenic Black Hills National Forest, Mount Rushmore rises 5,725 feet above sea level. It is surrounded by old-growth Ponderosa pine trees, other granite peaks, streams and wetlands. The 60-foot-tall presidential sculptures can be seen from miles away.
Jones, chair of the state committee marking America’s 250th birthday, said the celebration is drawing more attention to the monument that pays tribute to the nation’s first 150 years.
Freedom 250—a public-private partnership organizing Semiquincentennial events across the nation—says a rare Rushmore fireworks display on July 3 will serve as “a powerful tribute to 250 years of American independence.” Admission is limited to 4,800 ticketholders who won a public lottery earlier this year, but people can view the display at watch parties in nearby communities or via TV coverage.
President Donald Trump, who spoke at Rushmore in 2020, is also slated to deliver another speech; no other president has given two public addresses at the memorial.
Sometimes called “The Shrine of Democracy,” Rushmore “has a complex past—and one that was being invented at the time,” Jones said.
Virtually every aspect of the project, ranging from organizational support to sculpting methods, needed to be pioneered.
Funding shortfalls, political battles, and bad weather halted work multiple times. Disruptions consumed more than half of the monument’s 14-year construction period, which ended in 1941.
If not for dogged determination, engineering feats, and artistic ingenuity, this world-renowned American icon would never have taken shape.
Yet its likenesses of four U.S. presidents are built to last. They were born of Harney Peak Granite—which erodes at a rate of one inch every 10,000 years.
Along such a lengthy timeline, the history of Rushmore and our nation both register as mere blips.
Still, as the nation marks its 250 years with Rushmore as a centerpiece, the public is being invited to “enjoy the show and reflect on our nation’s remarkable journey and the great patriotic leaders who established, preserved and expanded our country’s destiny,” Dr. Jenifer Chatfield, deputy assistant secretary of U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Parks, said in a news release.
Accounts from Jones and other sources provide insights into the twists and turns of the mission improbable that produced Rushmore as an enduring symbol of America.
From No Name to World Fame
In 1885, when New York lawyer Charles E. Rushmore visited South Dakota, Mount Rushmore was not only faceless, but was also nameless. Merely by asking a local man what that specific peak was called, he unwittingly became its namesake.Decades later, the genesis of the famous Mount Rushmore carvings began arising from “the dreams of a gentle, aging scholar named Doane Robinson,” wrote author Rex Alan Smith in his 1985 book “The Carving of Mount Rushmore.”
Robinson, South Dakota’s state historian, envisioned a cluster of giant mountainside sculptures. He thought such a spectacle would become a tourist attraction. In 1924, he enlisted sculptor Gutzon Borglum to make that vision a reality.
An Idahoan born to Danish immigrants, Borglum studied art in Paris. After returning to the United States, he began creating “distinctly ‘American’ art,” the park service said. In 1908, he sculpted a “colossal head of Abraham Lincoln” out of marble—a precursor to the rendering that would later grace Mount Rushmore.
Borglum then was hired to begin work on Stone Mountain, a giant memorial to Georgia’s confederate heroes, carved into a mountainside. But the artist had a falling-out with sponsors of that project; it finally would be finished without Borglum, long after his death.
Borglum’s work on Stone Mountain helped him learn principles that were essential for the Rushmore project, including the use of explosives to blast away chunks of rock.
It’s remarkable that Borglum agreed to take on one of the world’s most ambitious projects when he was already in his late 50s, Jones said, but Borglum was exceptionally energetic and fit for his age.
The sculptor’s “genius and stubborn dedication” get the most credit for Mount Rushmore, Smith wrote. However, the presidential likenesses never would have taken shape, he argues, if not for the contributions of Robinson, lawmakers, and many others, including some 400 workers who toiled on the mountainside.
Smith, a native South Dakotan, witnessed some of that work in person. He interviewed 25 workmen for his book, which is touted as the first to tell the full story behind “an unrelenting battle of man against mountain that finally culminated in an awe-inspiring symbol of America.”
Big Idea Gets Bigger
Almost every aspect of the eventual monument differed from Robinson’s original idea.“Presidents had not been the intended subject, Borglum had not been the intended sculptor, and Rushmore had not been the intended mountain,” Smith wrote.
Instead, Robinson imagined depicting notable figures of the American West.
And he had asked Chicago sculptor Lorado Taft if he could transform natural granite spires known as The Needles, 20 miles southwest of Rushmore, into representations of Buffalo Bill Cody and Sioux Indian Chief Red Cloud.
After months of attempting to persuade Taft, who was ailing, Robinson contacted Borglum. The sculptor and many other artists of his time believed that artwork on a grand scale “has a permanence to it that transcends time,” Jones said.
Borglum surveyed several Black Hills sites before identifying Mount Rushmore as the ideal setting. “Its broad wall of exposed granite faced southeast to receive direct sunlight for most of the day,” the park service said, making it more ideal for viewing.
An admirer of New York’s Statue of Liberty and its powerful symbolism, Borglum wanted to create a landmark of national significance—not one with more limited, regional appeal, Jones said.
He believes Borglum was trying to convey that the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence “still live on and are visually manifested by the carving on this mountain.”
Borglum “was aware of the lasting legacy of his vision,” the park service says.
The sculptor once said, “If I can memorialize for the ages a tiny bit of America’s greatness by carving four of her leaders who contributed so much to this greatness, then I will have contributed something of value to the affairs of man.”
A narrative titled “The Meaning of Mount Rushmore,” which was inscribed on one of the 16 hidden porcelain panels, states that Borglum carved the four American presidents because they “symbolize the principles of liberty and freedom on which the nation was founded,” according to a transcript of a park service record.
The panel also explains why Borglum chose each of the four presidents:
“George Washington signifies the struggle for independence and the birth of the Republic;
“Thomas Jefferson, the territorial expansion of the country;
“Abraham Lincoln, the permanent union of the states, and equality for all citizens;
“An