I was the driving force behind us heading to South Dakota over the long weekend as I wanted to see Mount Rushmore. I had heard stories of it’s gander and majesty, but growing up in the Midwest, a trip to the Black Hills on a Summer vacation was not high on the list.
As we headed up the hill coming out of Keystone, SD here was my first exposure to the great masterpiece:
Even from the car at this distance, I could already appreciate the hard work and dedication that went into building this monument.
Mount Rushmore is a memorial that symbolizes America, and Americans should never lose sight of their cultural beginnings. -Gerard Baker, Superintendent.
It was fitting that we spent Memorial Day visiting one of the greatest monuments in American History. I won’t bore you with all the details of who built it, why it was built, or how long it tool to construct, but if you have the chance I would strongly suggest that you take time out of your busy schedule to visit this piece of our history that we can all be proud of.
For those of you who are interested, here are some facts that I pulled off of the nps.gov site that I found interesting.
Did You Know?
There were approximately 400 workers that worked at Mount Rushmore during the carving process from October 1927 to October 1941. Also throughout this extremely dangerous work there were no lives lost.
Did you know that the figure of Thomas Jefferson was started on Washington’s right? after 18 months of carving the figure of Jefferson had to be dynamited off the mountain and restarted on the left of Washington.
Mount Rushmore is named after a New York City Attorney? Charles E. Rushmore was sent out to this area in 1884 to check legal titles on properties. On his way back to Pine Camp he asked Bill Challis the name of this mountain. Bill replied, “Never had a name but from now on we’ll call it Rushmore.”
Over 90% of Mount Rushmore was carved by using dynamite. Dynamite blasts removed approximately 450,000 tons of rock from the mountain.
That there is a cave in the mountain behind the heads on Mount Rushmore? It is called the Hall of Records. Gutzon Borglum and his workers started the drilling in July of 1938 and work was halted in July of 1939.
