Mount Rushmore
NATIONAL MEMORIAL

A MONUMENT COMMEMORATING THE CONCEPTION, PRESERVATION, AND GROWTH OF THE GREAT AMERICAN REPUBLIC

PUBLISHED BY THE
Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills
1948

GUTZON BORGLUM

CONTENTS

Foreword 1

The Mighty Works of Borglum 5

From the Beginning 9

The Role of the National Park Service 16

Wind Cave National Park 17

Badlands National Monument 17

Jewel Cave National Monument 17

Devils Tower National Monument 17

The Antiquity of Mount Rushmore 18

The Hall of Records and Great Stairway 20

George Washington 22

Thomas Jefferson 24

Abraham Lincoln 26

Theodore Roosevelt 28

As Great Men Saw It 30

Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills 31

FOREWORD

A monument’s dimensions should be determined by the importance to civilization ofthe events commemorated. We are not here trying to carve an epic, portray a moonlightscene, or write a sonnet; neither are we dealing with mystery or tragedy, but rather theconstructive and the dramatic moments or crises in our amazing history. We are cool-headedly,clear-mindedly setting down a few crucial, epochal facts regarding theaccomplishments of the Old World radicals who shook the shackles of oppression fromtheir light feet and fled despotism to people a continent: who built an empire andrewrote the philosophy of freedom and compelled the world to accept its wiser, happierforms of government.

We believe the dimensions of national heartbeats are greater than village impulses,greater than city demands, greater than state dreams or ambitions. Therefore, webelieve a nation’s memorial should, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt,have a serenity, a nobility, a power that reflects the gods who inspired them and suggeststhe gods they have become.

As for sculptured mountains—

Civilization, even its fine arts, is, most of it, quantity-produced stuff; education,law, government, wealth—each is enduring only as the day. Too little of it lasts intotomorrow and tomorrow is strangely the enemy of today, as today has already begun toforget b