Headed Home - Mt Rushmore

On Saturday 3 August, we headed eastward. Sunday 4 August we reached Mt. Rushmore. It was threatening to rain and the sky was overcast. We made a quick pit-stop and then walked toward the carvings.

     The last time we were here the kids were little, and it was near sunset. Now it was Brenda and I and early Sunday morning. The carvings are amazing, and more so when we learned of how they were done.

     After taking pictures, we hobbled down to the "Artist's Studio" which had been the last office of the original conceiver and carver,  Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, aided by his son, Lincoln, did the carving based on a scale model of 1"= 1' Borglum had made.

     Borglum had been previously hired to do the Civil War carving on Stone Mountain in GA. He had been fired from that job, for some reason, and had chiseled off the work he had done, and incurred the wrath of his employers, so he was HAPPY to leave for the far West.

     The park ranger showed us how the workers had painstakingly reproduced on the mountain side Borglum's models. Borglum had carefully selected a SE-facing site so that the lighting would be good.  I would never have thought of that, but it worked to a charm. We had seen it late in the day and early, and it was well lit each time. He had also picked a mountain composed of the ideal type of rock to carve well, and not deteriorate quickly.

     After the talk by the well-studied park ranger, I had to ask some questions. 

     "How had the workers gotten to the top of the mountain?"

     "They either walked up, or the brave ones could ride a bucket up a cable that stretched from just outside the studio to the top."
      "How many workers were killed in the project?"
      "No lives were lost over the 14 years of work."

Wow, that is even MORE amazing.  Here 'tis.