Mt. Rushmore: No Greek Sandals
1927 AD
1927 1927
103.26W44.53N
ART

BLACK HILLS, SOUTH DAKOTA
	Frankly, South Dakota's economy was not in great shape, but Doane Robinson had an idea.
	In 1923, Robinson, the director of the South Dakota Historical Society, suggested carving a gigantic sculpture of some kind in the state's beautiful Black Hills.
	He may have been inspired by the sheer grandeur of the idea, but in selling his plan, he emphasized the economic benefit to the state of increased tourism.
	Robinson gathered support for his project and then persuaded sculptor Gutzon Borglum to design and supervise the project.
	Borglum, who had been carving a giant memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia, fell in love with the idea, and proposed carving into the granite face of Mt. Rushmore the heads of four great American presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
	Robinson would have preferred just Washington, but there was no arguing with Borglum, who hated being crossed and seemed to consider life to be one long argument.
	But still, he was talented, and appropriately, was fascinated by massive sculpture. He was also one of America's leading sculptors, having studied art at the Julian Academy in Paris. But despite his European art education, he was drawn to Western themes and looked down at European art. He sneered that Americans' interest in European art meant they would refuse to look at anything "unless it wears a helmet or Greek sandals."
	Borglum began work on Mt. Rushmore in 1927. The work took only about six-and-a-half years, but because of lack of funding and bad weather, the entire project wasn't finished until 14 years later. The federal government ended up paying for 84 percent of the project.
	Borglum died in 1941, shortly before the statues were completed. His son, Lincoln, finished the project.
	Each face of the massive sculpture is about 60-feet from chin to forehead, twice as tall as the head of the Great Sphinx of Giza, and, as Robinson predicted, Mt. Rushmore has become a major tourist attraction.