Monumental Anniversary

This has been a big year for Mount Rushmore National Memorial, the presidential sculpture and national park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Not only is it the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, but the memorial itself is also celebrating a special birthday: It’s the 75th anniversary of its completion. 

Led by Idaho-born designer Gutzon Borglum, nearly 400 workers carved the 60-foot-tall faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln into the granite mountainside. After 14 years of construction, the sculpture was finally completed on October 31, 1941.

Working on the sculpture was a tough and sometimes dangerous job. Most of the mountain was carved using dynamite. Experts had to carefully place the explosives in order to get rid of exactly the right amount of stone. Once the blasts cleared away all the extra rock, drillers and carvers chiseled more detailed features into the cliff face by hand. Other workers then smoothed the stone using special tools. These tasks took place in suspended seats called bosun chairs, which hung nearly 500 feet above the ground!

All told, workers removed nearly 450,000 tons of rock from the mountainside—most of which is still piled at the bottom of the memorial all these years later. But despite the dizzying heights and regular explosions, there were only a few minor injuries during construction. This excellent safety record was very rare for the era, says park ranger Marvin Achtenberg.

But the project had other setbacks. Funding ran out several times, creating delays and major design changes—including scrapping the original plan to sculpt the presidents from the waist up. Unfortunately, Gutzon Borglum died seven months before construction finished. His son, Lincoln, was left in charge of completing the final details of the presidential sculpture.

Despite all of the challenges, the hard work of the drillers, carvers, and designers paid off. Today, more than 2 million people visit the memorial each year.