Alongside Washington would be a massive inscription detailing major events in U. The actual carving began in , with 30 men working at a time to blast rock with dynamite. The U. As they doled out money, South Dakota and the federal backers were most concerned with Borglum etching the six-story tall faces into the east side of the mountain. He wanted a room accessible to visitors that would have tablets explaining the work done, as well as busts of famous Americans and key documents like the Declaration of Independence.
Those looking for admittance would climb an foot-long staircase made from the blasted rock, then pass under a gold-plated eagle with a foot wingspan. The room began to take shape in , when Borglum finally started blasting out an opening. A doorway 18 feet tall led to a room 75 feet long and 35 feet tall; red paint on the walls told workers where and how to extract the rock.
Holes that housed the sticks of dynamite created a honeycomb effect. South Dakota state senator Peter Norbeck wanted to help, and offered relief workers to assist in constructing the staircase. He pushed the senator away in the belief he could grease the necessary wheels. Governor William Bulow told him that finishing the faces was of the utmost priority, and that any ancillary work could be ignored until later. Any miner could blast a hole in the mountain—it took an artist to conceive of the actual sculpture.
Borglum's vision of future people someday happening upon his repository of America's long-vanished greatness eerily brings to mind the climactic scene of the film " Planet of the Apes ," in which the astronaut played by Charlton Heston ventures into the forbidden zone and discovers the Statue of Liberty, embedded in the sand.
But Borglum also wanted the Hall of Records to be impressively ornate, with fluted columns and a cathedral ceiling. He was inspired by Hollywood sets of the sort created for Cecil B. DeMille's cinematic epics, according to Taliaferro. Over time, according to the NPS historical study, the plan grew even more elaborate, with five or six more rooms on a lower floor beneath the main hall. The sculptor never really calculated how much the Hall of Records would cost, which contributed to the project's undoing.
Congress, which had stepped in to fund the memorial, balked at giving him a blank check, and work on the hall was halted in after legislators directed that the faces of the presidents were the only parts of the monument that should be completed. After Borglum's death and the U. The tunnel was the only part of the Hall to be completed. But the sculptor's daughter, Mary Ellis Borglum , had a passion about at least partly completing her father's vison for the Hall of Records.
According to NPS , some of the panels tell the story of Mount Rushmore, the reasons why the four Presidents were chosen to be depicted on the mountain, and provide a short history of the United States as well. A 1,pound kilogram capstone protects the panels. Gutzon Borglum finally got what he had wished for. Borglum asked President Calvin Coolidge to write the words and Coolidge agreed.
However, when Coolidge submitted his first entry, Borglum disliked it so much that he completely changed the wording before sending it to the newspapers. Coolidge was very upset and refused to write any more. The location for the proposed Entablature changed a number of times, but the idea was that it would appear somewhere next to the carved images. Ultimately, the Entablature was discarded, partly because the words would not be legible from a distance and partly due to a lack of funds.
Most of these men carried heavy drills or jackhammers—some even carried dynamite. It seemed like a perfect setting for an accident. However, despite the seemingly dangerous working conditions, not a single worker died while carving Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately, however, many of the workers inhaled silica dust while working on Mount Rushmore, which led them to later die from the lung disease silicosis. When Borglum had to scrap his plans for an Entablature, he created a new plan for a Hall of Records.
The Hall of Records was to be a large room 80 by feet carved into Mount Rushmore that would be a repository for American history. For visitors to reach the Hall of Records, Borglum planned to carve an foot-high, granite grand stairway from his studio near the base of the mountain all the way up to the entrance, located in a small canyon behind Lincoln's head. Inside was to be elaborately decorated with mosaic walls and contain busts of famous Americans.
Aluminum scrolls detailing important events in American history would be proudly displayed and important documents would be housed in bronze and glass cabinets. Starting in July , workers blasted away granite to make the Hall of Records. To Borglum's great dismay, work had to be halted in July when funding became so tight that Congress, worried that Mount Rushmore would never be finished, mandated that all work had to be focused on only the four faces.
What remains is a roughly hewn, foot-long tunnel, that is feet wide and feet high. No stairs were carved, so the Hall of Records remains unattainable to visitors. For nearly 60 years, the Hall of Records remained empty. On August 9, , a small repository was placed inside the Hall of Records. Housed in a teak box, which in turn sits in a titanium vault covered by a granite capstone, the repository consists of 16 porcelain enamel panels that share the story of the carving of Mount Rushmore, about Borglum, and an answer as to why the four men were chosen to be carved upon the mountain.
The repository is for men and women of the far future, who may wonder about this wondrous carving on Mount Rushmore. As most sculptors do, Borglum made a plaster model of what the sculptures would look like before starting work. Over the course of carving Mount Rushmore, Borglum had to change his model nine times. However, what is interesting to note is that Borglum fully intended on carving more than just heads.
As shown in this model, Borglum intended the sculptures of the four presidents to be from the waist up. Congress ultimately decided, based on lack of funding, that the carving on Mount Rushmore would end once the four faces were complete.
The original plan was for Thomas Jefferson's head to be carved to the left of George Washington as a visitor would be looking at the monument. Carving for the face of Jefferson began in July , but it was soon discovered that the area of granite at that location was full of quartz, which was unsuitable for creating the carvings.
For 18 months, the crew continued to blast away the quartz-riddled granite only to find more quartz. In , Borglum made the difficult decision to move Jefferson's face. The workmen blasted what work had been done to the left of Washington and then started to work on Jefferson's new face to the right of Washington.
Borglum was not just creating his massive "Shrine of Democracy" on Mount Rushmore for the people of the present or tomorrow, he was thinking of people thousands of years in the future.
By determining that the granite on Mount Rushmore would erode at the rate of 1 inch per every 10, years, Borglum created a monument to democracy that should continue to be awe-inspiring far into the future.
But, just to be sure that Mount Rushmore would endure, Borglum added an extra foot onto George Washington's nose.
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