#BlueStarByte: The Making of Mount Rushmore Memorial

Mount Rushmore is a symbolic tribute to the ideals of American democracy, featuring Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, whose faces represent the first 150 years of U.S. history: the nation’s founding, expansion, development, and preservation. However, its creation was surrounded by controversy, from the use of land sacred to the Sioux Nation and sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan, to a political and financial battle over control of the project amid corruption allegations.

The project was initially envisioned as a monument to the American West in South Dakota’s Black Hills to attract tourism, but Borglum argued that it should become a national monument rather than a regional one. In 1929, President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation funding the project and established the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission to oversee federal funds. While Borglum resisted government control, the Commission raised concerns about financial mismanagement, leading to a prolonged dispute over the project’s oversight. After extensive lobbying in Washington, Borglum secured the creation of a new commission under his terms, and Mount Rushmore was placed under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. Although each president was originally planned to be sculpted from head to waist, Borglum’s death and funding limitations led to the project being declared complete on October 31, 1941.