Geography Corner
By Chris Rowan

Question: John Gutzon Borglum (1871 - 1941) is best remembered for which National Monument? Where is it located, how big is it and what does it represent?

Answer: Mount Rushmore , in the black hills of South Dakota, 23 miles southwest of Rapid City – the geographic center of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii). The monument depicts the faces of four Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. The faces average 60 feet from chin to forehead - designed for a man 465 feet tall, nearly the size of the 66 foot Sphinx of Giza, Egypt and over three times the size of the Statue of Liberty’s face. They represent: The Creation of the Country (Washington), the Expansion (Jefferson, for the Louisiana Purchase of 1803), the Preservation (Lincoln) and the Conservation (Roosevelt, because of his interest in protecting the environment).The monument is carved in a mountain at an elevation of 5,500 feet above sea level and 500 feet above the valley – higher than the great Pyramids of Egypt.

Background: John Gutzon Borglum created this monument by using the controlled use of dynamite. He began blasting away in 1927, but it would take 14 years to complete, primarily because it was difficult to scrape up money to continue work during the Great Depression. It cost $1 million (that’s right, only one million) and was paid for largely by the Federal Government. Borglum hired 400 miners, and despite perilous conditions, work was completed in October 1941 without a single loss of life. New Yorkers can find examples of Borglum’s work that are closer to home than South Dakota. They include: a head of Lincoln in the Capitol’s rotunda in Washington, D.C., a statue of Lincoln at a Newark courthouse and the Sculpture of the Apostles at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He died seven months before his most famous work was completed, and the project was handed over to his son – Lincoln Borglum.

Although John Gutzon produced his share of Lincolns, he also worked on a memorial to the Confederacy in Georgia (but withdrew from the project). The memorial included plans for a larger than life statue of Robert E. Lee.#

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