“American history shall march along that skyline,” announced Gutzon Borglum in 1924, gazing at the Black Hills of South Dakota. In 1927 Borglum began sculpting the images of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt on the granite face of 6,000-foot Mount Rushmore. Most of the sculpting was done by experienced miners under Borglum’s direction. Working with jackhammers and dynamite, they removed some 400,000 tons of outer rock, cutting within three inches of the final surface. When Borglum died in March 1941, his dream of the world’s biggest sculpture was near completion. His son Lincoln finished the work that October, some 14 years after it was begun.

Today in the Word, January 2, 1993