- For the 1960s rock band, see Mount Rushmore (band).
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, near Keystone, South Dakota, is a United States Presidential Memorial that memorializes the birth, growth, preservation, and development of the United States of America. The entire memorial covers 1,278 acres (518 hectares),[1]and is managed by the National Park Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior. The carved faces of former U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln are on the southeast face of the mountain, which in 1885, had been named after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer.[2]
The project of carving Mount Rushmore originally started with the purpose of increasing tourism in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. After long negotiations involving the Congressional delegation and president Calvin Coolidge, the project received Congressional approval, and work took from October 1927 to October 1941. Mount Rushmore is largely composed of granite. The flora and fauna of Mount Rushmore is similar to that of the rest of the Black Hills area.
History
Doane Robinson, a historian, created the idea for Mount Rushmore in 1923 in order to attract people to South Dakota. Congress authorized the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission on March 3, 1925.[3]
In 1924, Robinson convinced Gutzon Borglum to go to the Black Hills region to ensure that the carving could occur. The original plan to do the carvings in the Needles area was precluded due to weathering, but Mount Rushmore turned out to be a good spot. Borglum said upon seeing Mount Rushmore, "America will march along that skyline."[3] President Coolidge insisted that along with Washington two Republicans and one Democrat be portrayed.[4]
Between October 4, 1927 and October 31, 1941, Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers sculpted the 60 ft (18 m) colossal busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 150 years of American history. These presidents were selected by Borglum because of their national focus.[3]
In 1933, the National Park Service took Mount Rushmore under its jurisdiction. Engineer Julian Spotts helped with the project by improving the tram to reach the top of Mount Rushmore for easy use by workers. By July 4, 1934, Washington's face had been completed and was dedicated. The face of Thomas Jefferson was dedicated in 1936, the face of Abraham Lincoln on September 17, 1937, and the face of Theodore Roosevelt in 1939.
In 1937, a bill was introduced in Congress to add the head of Susan B. Anthony, but a rider was passed on an appropriations bill requiring that federal funds be used to finish only those heads that had already been started at that time.[5]
Mount Rushmore was originally planned to be sculpted down to the waists, but was prevented by lack of funds.
Visitors to the memorial come primarily to view the granite sculpture itself, but also of interest was the Sculptor's Studio built in 1939 under the direction of the artist, Gutzon Borglum. Unique plaster models and tools related to the sculpting process are displayed there. Borgulm died in the March of 1941 due to embolism. His son, Lincoln Borgulm, continued the project, but insufficient funding forced the carving to end.[3] Originally, it was planned that the sculpture would go from head to waist.[6] The entire project had cost $989,992.32.[7]
The rock formation is carved on a sacred Lakota Native American site. A Crazy Horse Memorial, begun in 1948, is currently being carved out of a rockface nearby in South Dakota.
On October 15, 1966, Mount Rushmore was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1991, President George Bush officially dedicated Mount Rushmore.
Recently, ten years of redevelopment work culminated with the completion of extensive new visitor facilities and sidewalks. These include a new Visitor Center and Museum and the Presidential Trail, a walking trail and boardwalk providing spectacular close-up views of the mountain sculpture. Maintenance of the memorial presents a unique challenge for conservators, sometimes requiring mountain climbing to remove lichens and to generally clean the memorial.
On July 8, 2005, Alfred Kärcher GmbH, a German manufacturer of cleaning machines, started a cleanup operation of the faces. The company offered to clean the faces for free. It is the first time in the memorial's history that the faces have been pressure washed.
Ecology
The Black Hills
The memorial serves as home to many animals and plants representative of the Black Hills of South Dakota. Several birds like the turkey vulture, bald eagle, hawk, and meadowlark fly around and inhabit the Black Hills area. Terrestrial animals include the chipmunk, squirrel, skunk, porcupine, raccoon, beaver, badger, coyote, and bobcat. Several animals are not indigenous to the area; the bighorn sheep and Rocky Mountain goat were both from other areas, the former from Canada and the latter to replace the extinct population of Audubon sheep.[8]
Coniferous trees surround most of the monument, which shades the trails from the hot South Dakota sun, mainly including the Ponderosa pine. Other trees include the bur oak and the Black Hills spruce. Nine species of shrubs live near Mount Rushmore. There is also a wide variety of wildflowers, including most commonly the snapdragon, sunflower, and violet.[8] However, only approximately 5% of the plant species in found in the Black Hills were indigenous to the region.[9]
Geology
Entrance to the memorial.
The memorial is carved on the northwest margin of the Harney Peak granite batholith in the Black Hills of South Dakota, so the geologic formations of the heart of the Black Hills region are also evident at Mount Rushmore. The batholith magma intruded into the pre-existing mica schist rocks during the Precambrian period about 1.6 billion years ago.[10] However, the uneven cooling of the molten rock caused the formation of both fine and coarse-grained minerals, including quartz, feldspar, muscovite, and biotite. Fractures in the granite were filled (and sealed) by pegmatite dikes. The light colored streaks in the presidents' foreheads are due to these dikes.
The Black Hills granites were exposed to erosion during the late Precambrian, but were buried by sandstones and other sediments during the Cambrian Period. The area remained buried throughout the Paleozoic Era, but were exposed again to erosion during the tectonic uplift about 70 million years ago.[10] The Black Hills area was uplifted as an elongated geologic dome which towered some 20,000 ft (6 km) above sea level, but erosion wore the area down to only 4,000 ft (1.2 km).[11] The subsequent natural erosion of this mountain range allowed the carvings by stripping the granite of the overlying sediments and the softer adjacent schists. The contact between the granite and darker schist is viewable just below the bust of Washington.
Mt Rushmore, showing full size of mountain.
Geology controlled the site selection by Borglum because of several factors. The rock was composed of smooth, homogeneous fine-grained granite, which was very resistant, only eroding about 1 inch every 10,000 years.[3] With a 5,725 ft (1745 m) height, Mount Rushmore was the tallest mountain in the surrounding terrain.[12] The mountain faced the southeast, so that it faced the sun most of the day.
Appearances
Film
- The memorial was famously used as the location of the final chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest (the closeups were shot on a set, as permission to shoot an attempted killing on the face of a national monument was refused by the Park Service).
- Mount Rushmore is featured in Team America: World Police as the Team America headquarters which was destroyed by Michael Moore's suicide bomb.
- In Superman II, General Zod and his partners in crime deface the memorial, using their superpowers to replace three of the busts with their own faces and wipe out the fourth.
- In Mars Attacks!, the Martians in a UFO carve their faces into Mount Rushmore, replacing the Presidents' heads.
- In the Family Guy episode "North by North Quahog", Peter and Lois are chased down the monument by Mel Gibson after stealing a copy of his new movie, "Passion Of The Christ 2: Crucify This" in a spoof of the chase scene from Hitchcock's "North by Northwest".
Music
Print
Notes and references
- ↑ McGeveran, William A. Jr. et al (2004). The Word Almanac and Book of Facts 2004. New York: World Almanac Education Group, Inc. ISBN 0-88687-910-8.
- ↑ Belanger, Ian A. et al. Mt. Rushmore- presidents on the rocks. URL accessed on March 13, 2006.
- ↑ a b c d e Carving History (October 2, 2004). National Park Service.
- ↑ Fite, Gilbert C. Mount Rushmore (1984). ISBN 0806109599, the standard scholarly study.
- ↑ Library of Congress "Wise Guide", August 2003, accessed January 18, 2006
- ↑ Mount Rushmore National Memorial. A Sightseer's Guide to Engineering. URL accessed on March 18, 2006.
- ↑ Mount Rushmore National Memorial. URL accessed on March 19, 2006.
- ↑ a b Mount Rushmore- Flora and Fauna. American Park Network. URL accessed on March 16, 2006.
- ↑ Nature & Science- Mount Rushmore. National Park Service. URL accessed on March 13, 2006.
- ↑ a b Geologic Activity. National Park Service.
- ↑ Irvin, James R. Great Plains Gallery (2001). URL accessed on March 16, 2006.
- ↑ Mount Rushmore, South Dakota (November 1, 2004). Peakbagger.com. URL accessed on March 13, 2006.
Further reading
See also
External links
