October 31, 1941 – Completion of Mount Rushmore National Memorial

On this day in history, work was completed on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota. The sculpture features the 60-foot heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The project was overseen between the years of 1927 to 1941 by Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln.

It is not often advertised (or if so, cared about) that the sculpture was built on land sacred to Native Americans. The Lakota called this granite formation Six Grandfathers Mountain, and it was a place for prayer and devotion for the Native people of the Great Plains.

The U.S. government had signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, giving the Lakota exclusive use of the Black Hills. Unfortunately for the Lakota, gold was discovered in the region. Thus in 1877, the U.S. broke the treaty and took over the land. Settlers and prospectors then poured into the region.

South Dakota became a state in 1889. As Amy McKeever tells the story for National Geographic, Doane Robinson, a historian at the South Dakota State Historical Society, believed the state needed more tourists. In 1924, learning about an attempt to carve the likenesses of Confederate leaders into the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia, Robinson launched a campaign to create South Dakota’s own mountain men on Mount Rushmore.

He contacted Stone Mountain sculptor Gutzon Borglum — who was fired by the Stone Mountain association in 1925 for “mismanagement of funds and ‘his offensive egotism and his delusions of grandeur.’”

By August 1925, Borglum agreed to work on Mount Rushmore—but wanted to depict American presidents rather than heroes of the American West, as envisioned by Robinson. Borglum believed that the sculpture should have broader appeal and chose the four presidents. McKeever explains that in Borglum’s view, George Washington, the country’s first president, would represent its birth. Thomas Jefferson, who nearly doubled the country’s size with his purchase of the Louisiana Territory, stood for its westward expansion. Theodore Roosevelt, who had overseen the construction of the Panama Canal, was a symbol of economic growth. And Abraham Lincoln was selected for having fought to preserve the nation in the Civil War.

Gutzon Borglum’s original vision of the monumental Mount Rushmore figures via South Dakota Public Broadcasting

Peter Norbeck, U.S. senator from South Dakota, sponsored the project and secured federal funding. Construction began in 1927 by some 400 workers; the presidents’ faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. After Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, his son Lincoln took over as leader of the construction project. Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist, but lack of funding forced construction to end on October 31, 1941.

As to why the Six Grandfathers Mountain was called Mount Rushmore, the change dates back to the 1880s. New York attorney Charles Rushmore came to the area to check the titles to properties for an eastern mining company. How the name change occurred is unclear, but the United States Board of Geographic Names officially recognized the name in June 1930, five years after Rushmore donated $5,000 (equivalent to $73,786 in 2020) towards Gutzon Borglum’s sculpture.

The U.S. National Park Service took control of the memorial in 1933, and continues continues to manages the memorial to the present day. Mount Rushmore attracts nearly three million people annually.

Gutzon Borglum observes two workers carving Jefferson’s eye on Mount Rushmore.
Charles D’Emery via NPS