1 00:01:49,818 --> 00:01:52,054 NARRATOR: Deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota 2 00:01:52,054 --> 00:01:54,956 stands one of the biggest and unlikeliest monuments 3 00:01:54,956 --> 00:01:57,159 on the face of the earth-- 4 00:01:57,159 --> 00:01:59,261 a feat of modern engineering 5 00:01:59,261 --> 00:02:03,098 that relied on the ingenuity of the ancient Greeks-- 6 00:02:03,098 --> 00:02:05,834 a carving of surprising delicacy, 7 00:02:05,834 --> 00:02:09,171 fashioned with jackhammers and dynamite, 8 00:02:09,171 --> 00:02:10,972 a work of public art 9 00:02:10,972 --> 00:02:15,844 that began without a whisper of public support. 10 00:02:17,679 --> 00:02:22,050 Its size, its remote location, its compelling oddness 11 00:02:22,050 --> 00:02:25,420 begs the question, how'd it get there? 12 00:02:27,856 --> 00:02:29,958 The answer begins with one man: 13 00:02:29,958 --> 00:02:32,994 an excitable, erratic and gifted sculptor 14 00:02:32,994 --> 00:02:35,163 named Gutzon Borglum. 15 00:02:37,699 --> 00:02:40,669 MAN: When he was angry, he was furious. 16 00:02:40,669 --> 00:02:43,171 When he was generous, he was overwhelming. 17 00:02:43,171 --> 00:02:47,609 When he was being petty, he was penurious. 18 00:02:47,609 --> 00:02:49,311 He was a hyperactive man 19 00:02:49,311 --> 00:02:53,515 who traveled in the middle of a self-generated whirlwind. 20 00:02:53,515 --> 00:02:56,251 WOMAN: But he was so full of energy. 21 00:02:56,251 --> 00:03:00,188 I mean, it was a vital force within him, burning within him. 22 00:03:00,188 --> 00:03:02,991 He could charm anybody to do anything 23 00:03:02,991 --> 00:03:05,494 if he really put his mind to it. 24 00:03:05,494 --> 00:03:09,331 And he could also raise a terrible fuss if you didn't. 25 00:03:09,331 --> 00:03:11,500 The dimensions of Washington's head 26 00:03:11,500 --> 00:03:13,502 would permit the Sphinx of Egypt 27 00:03:13,502 --> 00:03:16,505 to lie between the end of the nose and the eyebrows. 28 00:03:16,505 --> 00:03:19,708 NARRATOR: Gutzon Borglum was an egomaniacal genius 29 00:03:19,708 --> 00:03:21,309 and a fetching blowhard, 30 00:03:21,309 --> 00:03:24,679 a bullish patriot and a wifty dreamer. 31 00:03:26,281 --> 00:03:27,949 When he began Mount Rushmore, 32 00:03:27,949 --> 00:03:31,386 he still believed that one man could change the world. 33 00:03:31,386 --> 00:03:32,754 (explosion) 34 00:03:32,754 --> 00:03:34,956 A 16-year struggle with the mountain-- 35 00:03:34,956 --> 00:03:38,126 through withering criticism, lack of trained workers, 36 00:03:38,126 --> 00:03:40,162 constant delay and crushing debt-- 37 00:03:40,162 --> 00:03:42,864 would test that plain, rock-hard, 38 00:03:42,864 --> 00:03:44,866 American-made conviction. 39 00:04:38,119 --> 00:04:40,355 NARRATOR: On October 1, 1925, 40 00:04:40,355 --> 00:04:44,359 a few hundred souls made their way up a rough mountain pass 41 00:04:44,359 --> 00:04:48,530 toward a seldom seen peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota. 42 00:04:48,530 --> 00:04:51,399 That day, at the base of Mount Rushmore, 43 00:04:51,399 --> 00:04:53,935 Gutzon Borglum announced his intent 44 00:04:53,935 --> 00:04:56,705 to create the great American memorial. 45 00:04:56,705 --> 00:05:00,275 In the mountain granite, he would carve a monument 46 00:05:00,275 --> 00:05:02,744 befitting the world's newest power: 47 00:05:02,744 --> 00:05:05,313 statues of four American presidents, 48 00:05:05,313 --> 00:05:07,249 more than 30 stories tall. 49 00:05:07,249 --> 00:05:12,487 Gutzon Borglum's monument would dwarf the Statue of Liberty, 50 00:05:12,487 --> 00:05:15,524 the Sphinx of Egypt, the Colossus of Rhodes. 51 00:05:15,524 --> 00:05:20,695 WOMAN: If you start way back when we first came here, 52 00:05:20,695 --> 00:05:24,566 my father was looked upon as a weirdo and a crank. 53 00:05:24,566 --> 00:05:27,936 They thought he was really just very peculiar 54 00:05:27,936 --> 00:05:31,206 and he had big ideas that would go nowhere. 55 00:05:32,274 --> 00:05:34,209 MAN: This is a crazy idea 56 00:05:34,209 --> 00:05:38,847 in a society that is so recently removed from the frontier 57 00:05:38,847 --> 00:05:41,850 that everything had to be utilitarian. 58 00:05:41,850 --> 00:05:43,919 It had to have a purpose. 59 00:05:43,919 --> 00:05:47,722 And of what good were faces carved on a mountain 60 00:05:47,722 --> 00:05:52,260 even if you could do it, and who knew if you could do it? 61 00:05:52,260 --> 00:05:55,263 MAN: First he told the Rapid City businessmen supposedly 62 00:05:55,263 --> 00:05:57,933 that he didn't need financial support from them. 63 00:05:57,933 --> 00:06:00,669 Then after that very first dedication ceremony 64 00:06:00,669 --> 00:06:02,837 in, uh, I believe in October of 1925, 65 00:06:02,837 --> 00:06:05,173 when he had dinner with them afterward, 66 00:06:05,173 --> 00:06:07,676 he said he really needed that $50,000 now. 67 00:06:07,676 --> 00:06:09,544 This is the sort of thing 68 00:06:09,544 --> 00:06:12,447 that angered the people of South Dakota, 69 00:06:12,447 --> 00:06:15,817 who began to become very skeptical about him. 70 00:06:15,817 --> 00:06:19,354 NARRATOR: In 1925, Gutzon Borglum wasn't much concerned 71 00:06:19,354 --> 00:06:21,723 with what the locals thought of him. 72 00:06:21,723 --> 00:06:24,559 His critics, he said, were mere horseflies. 73 00:06:24,559 --> 00:06:26,494 If South Dakotans were too thick 74 00:06:26,494 --> 00:06:29,931 to seize the opportunity in this magnificent work of art, 75 00:06:29,931 --> 00:06:32,300 then they didn't deserve Gutzon Borglum. 76 00:06:32,300 --> 00:06:34,135 That's the way Borglum saw it, 77 00:06:34,135 --> 00:06:36,338 and that's all that mattered to him. 78 00:06:41,509 --> 00:06:45,246 All his life, John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum 79 00:06:45,246 --> 00:06:48,083 was hard-headed and self-absorbed. 80 00:06:48,083 --> 00:06:49,651 As a child, he decided 81 00:06:49,651 --> 00:06:52,687 he would make himself someone extraordinary 82 00:06:52,687 --> 00:06:55,290 and he spent his life in that effort, 83 00:06:55,290 --> 00:06:57,659 fueled by anger, energy and ego. 84 00:06:59,594 --> 00:07:04,366 The son of Danish immigrants, Gutzon was born in Idaho in 1867 85 00:07:04,366 --> 00:07:06,167 and raised in the West. 86 00:07:06,167 --> 00:07:10,338 His father had been part of the Mormon migration west; 87 00:07:10,338 --> 00:07:13,141 his mother he barely knew. 88 00:07:13,141 --> 00:07:17,045 MAN: Borglum was a child of polygamy. 89 00:07:17,045 --> 00:07:21,950 His father had two wives when he lived in Idaho-- 90 00:07:21,950 --> 00:07:26,688 Borglum's birth mother and his mother's sister. 91 00:07:26,688 --> 00:07:30,725 His father decided he didn't want to be a Mormon anymore 92 00:07:30,725 --> 00:07:34,863 and decided to go back to Omaha, where polygamy was taboo. 93 00:07:34,863 --> 00:07:36,598 It was decided 94 00:07:36,598 --> 00:07:40,669 that Gutzon's mother would be discarded from the family 95 00:07:40,669 --> 00:07:43,738 and never spoken of again. 96 00:07:43,738 --> 00:07:45,940 There were eight children in the family 97 00:07:45,940 --> 00:07:48,276 and there had been two wives at one time, 98 00:07:48,276 --> 00:07:51,112 and one, Gutzon's mother, actually left the family 99 00:07:51,112 --> 00:07:53,348 and they were raised by the stepmother. 100 00:07:53,348 --> 00:07:57,819 He ran away from home because he was unhappy and at that... 101 00:07:57,819 --> 00:08:01,823 he started, I think, when he was only five years old, 102 00:08:01,823 --> 00:08:05,827 and he finally built up a confidence within himself 103 00:08:05,827 --> 00:08:08,930 that he could do what he desired to do. 104 00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:16,271 MAN: He had a deep sense of his own abilities, I think. 105 00:08:16,271 --> 00:08:20,575 He ran away from home a number of times to become an artist 106 00:08:20,575 --> 00:08:24,145 and, uh, wound up in California at a very early age studying art 107 00:08:24,145 --> 00:08:26,748 and, uh, he even said he was going to be famous 108 00:08:26,748 --> 00:08:27,782 before he was 30. 109 00:08:30,151 --> 00:08:34,122 NARRATOR: In his 20s, Gutzon moved from northern California 110 00:08:34,122 --> 00:08:37,859 to London to Paris, painting landscapes and portraits, 111 00:08:37,859 --> 00:08:39,728 trying on different styles, 112 00:08:39,728 --> 00:08:43,932 supporting himself and his first wife with marginal success. 113 00:08:45,433 --> 00:08:51,106 As he passed 30, Borglum was near broke, failing at marriage, 114 00:08:51,106 --> 00:08:52,907 and worse, unknown. 115 00:08:52,907 --> 00:08:56,044 CARTER: He was very distraught when he was in Europe 116 00:08:56,044 --> 00:08:58,747 and he didn't feel like he was making money, 117 00:08:58,747 --> 00:09:01,549 he didn't feel like he had a name for himself. 118 00:09:01,549 --> 00:09:02,817 He wasn't happy, 119 00:09:02,817 --> 00:09:04,753 and he wanted to change all that. 120 00:09:04,753 --> 00:09:06,755 He wanted to be... be recognized. 121 00:09:06,755 --> 00:09:13,294 NARRATOR: While in Paris, Borglum found his pole star, Auguste Rodin. 122 00:09:13,294 --> 00:09:16,231 Rodin's work was sculpture cast anew-- 123 00:09:16,231 --> 00:09:21,102 modern, evocative and talked about. 124 00:09:21,102 --> 00:09:25,106 In the glow that surrounded the great artist, 125 00:09:25,106 --> 00:09:28,977 Borglum saw a reflection of his own future. 126 00:09:28,977 --> 00:09:32,380 CARTER: In 1901, when he came back to the United States, 127 00:09:32,380 --> 00:09:34,482 he just burst into New York City 128 00:09:34,482 --> 00:09:38,019 sort of determined to become a very successful sculptor. 129 00:09:38,019 --> 00:09:40,121 And within those first ten years, 130 00:09:40,121 --> 00:09:42,991 he designed over a hundred pieces for St. John the Divine 131 00:09:42,991 --> 00:09:44,359 in New York City, 132 00:09:44,359 --> 00:09:48,129 he'd sold the marble Lincoln for the Rotunda, 133 00:09:48,129 --> 00:09:51,766 he'd sold the Mares of Diomedes to the Metropolitan. 134 00:09:51,766 --> 00:09:53,968 He'd done the Mackay statue in Reno, Nevada. 135 00:09:53,968 --> 00:09:55,904 He'd done Sheridan in Washington, D.C. 136 00:09:55,904 --> 00:10:00,775 I mean, in the first ten years, he was doing all these things. 137 00:10:13,822 --> 00:10:18,993 HOUSER: Every really great artist has something in their personality 138 00:10:18,993 --> 00:10:22,297 that they're able to impart into their work 139 00:10:22,297 --> 00:10:24,766 that is unique and is only them. 140 00:10:24,766 --> 00:10:26,901 With Borglum, I see the personality. 141 00:10:26,901 --> 00:10:29,470 When I touch those surfaces a lot of time, 142 00:10:29,470 --> 00:10:33,141 I often expect almost to feel a little glaze of electricity 143 00:10:33,141 --> 00:10:35,276 that's traversing across the form. 144 00:10:36,678 --> 00:10:40,248 There's a life to it, there's a sense of movement. 145 00:10:40,248 --> 00:10:43,751 And I think they were done generally very quickly 146 00:10:43,751 --> 00:10:45,453 and very fast. 147 00:10:45,453 --> 00:10:47,889 My father said that oftentimes he would come in 148 00:10:47,889 --> 00:10:50,692 and do something just like this and then it'd be done. 149 00:10:50,692 --> 00:10:53,628 Sometimes he would even have his suit on and his Stetson, 150 00:10:53,628 --> 00:10:56,497 wearing his Stetson hat, you know, and he would come in 151 00:10:56,497 --> 00:10:59,801 and model for 15 minutes and he would say, "Cast it,"you know, 152 00:10:59,801 --> 00:11:01,669 and he'd walk out. 153 00:11:01,669 --> 00:11:07,542 NARRATOR: Gutzon Borglum's most gripping creation was Gutzon Borglum. 154 00:11:07,542 --> 00:11:09,777 From an obscure frontier boyhood, 155 00:11:09,777 --> 00:11:13,214 he'd made himself literate, continental, magnetic, 156 00:11:13,214 --> 00:11:16,117 a friend to the rich and famous, 157 00:11:16,117 --> 00:11:19,754 lord of a 500-acre estate in Connecticut. 158 00:11:19,754 --> 00:11:23,625 He was also rough around the edges, sharp in places 159 00:11:23,625 --> 00:11:25,727 and apt to injure. 160 00:11:25,727 --> 00:11:27,896 His politics could be crude: 161 00:11:27,896 --> 00:11:30,965 anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and racist. 162 00:11:30,965 --> 00:11:35,803 Borglum lived a series of poses, each meant to call attention, 163 00:11:35,803 --> 00:11:39,374 and he found that nothing drew attention like a public scrap. 164 00:11:39,374 --> 00:11:42,477 He skirmished with the rector of St. John the Divine, 165 00:11:42,477 --> 00:11:45,813 the mayor of New York, President Woodrow Wilson. 166 00:11:45,813 --> 00:11:49,684 "He was no mute, shrinking artist,"said one friend. 167 00:11:49,684 --> 00:11:51,819 "He knew how to answer back. 168 00:11:51,819 --> 00:11:53,755 And the press loved him." 169 00:11:53,755 --> 00:11:57,058 Gutzon's harshest attacks were aimed at other artists. 170 00:11:57,058 --> 00:11:59,160 He called one a "pinhead sculptor" 171 00:11:59,160 --> 00:12:02,463 and claimed that most of the nation's public monuments 172 00:12:02,463 --> 00:12:04,866 were worthless and should be dynamited. 173 00:12:04,866 --> 00:12:08,202 This was America's Colossal Age, he said, 174 00:12:08,202 --> 00:12:12,173 and American artists should celebrate it. 175 00:12:12,173 --> 00:12:15,443 HOUSER: An artist has a great many elements to work with 176 00:12:15,443 --> 00:12:17,278 to create something aesthetic. 177 00:12:17,278 --> 00:12:20,181 You have the warmth and the coldness of color. 178 00:12:20,181 --> 00:12:23,384 You have the smoothness and the roughness of texture. 179 00:12:23,384 --> 00:12:28,056 You have the contrast from light and dark. 180 00:12:28,056 --> 00:12:30,591 You also have, when you get to scale, 181 00:12:30,591 --> 00:12:34,362 you find that scale is an aesthetic quality in itself. 182 00:12:34,362 --> 00:12:38,900 In other words, when you see something extremely large, 183 00:12:38,900 --> 00:12:42,637 it has an impact on you just because it's big. 184 00:12:44,739 --> 00:12:48,343 NARRATOR: Borglum understood that most Americans could not be moved 185 00:12:48,343 --> 00:12:49,744 by beauty alone. 186 00:12:49,744 --> 00:12:52,280 "Sheer mass is emotional," he once wrote. 187 00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:56,050 "There is something in sheer volume that awes and terrifies, 188 00:12:56,050 --> 00:12:57,819 lifts us out of ourselves." 189 00:12:57,819 --> 00:13:01,322 In 1915, the sculptor staked his reputation 190 00:13:01,322 --> 00:13:05,360 on the conviction that America demanded scale. 191 00:13:05,360 --> 00:13:07,261 That year, at a mountain in Georgia, 192 00:13:07,261 --> 00:13:10,331 he made bold to promise the eighth wonder of the world: 193 00:13:10,331 --> 00:13:13,935 a 400-foot-high, 1,500-foot-wide monument 194 00:13:13,935 --> 00:13:16,971 to the Confederacy. 195 00:13:16,971 --> 00:13:20,408 HOUSER: When Borglum was called down to Stone Mountain originally, 196 00:13:20,408 --> 00:13:23,544 he was invited to do a small bust of Lee 197 00:13:23,544 --> 00:13:25,713 and put it on top of the mountain. 198 00:13:25,713 --> 00:13:28,049 And he told the Daughters of the Confederacy, he said, 199 00:13:28,049 --> 00:13:30,218 "Putting a bust of Lee on top of that mountain 200 00:13:30,218 --> 00:13:33,855 would be like pasting a postage stamp on a barn door." 201 00:13:33,855 --> 00:13:35,323 You know, "It's incongruous. 202 00:13:35,323 --> 00:13:39,127 "If you're going to talk about a mountain that size, 203 00:13:39,127 --> 00:13:41,062 "you have to talk about a piece of sculpture 204 00:13:41,062 --> 00:13:44,198 that's commensurate in one way or another." 205 00:13:44,198 --> 00:13:46,968 That sort of opened the door, I think, to him 206 00:13:46,968 --> 00:13:49,037 for mountain carving. 207 00:13:49,037 --> 00:13:52,073 VHAY: Stone Mountain was the dream of Atlanta 208 00:13:52,073 --> 00:13:54,108 and the southerners that were down there, 209 00:13:54,108 --> 00:13:57,712 to have a commemorative memorial to Lee. 210 00:13:57,712 --> 00:14:00,048 But they didn't have any money. 211 00:14:00,048 --> 00:14:02,784 So he mortgaged the place in Connecticut 212 00:14:02,784 --> 00:14:06,020 for a tremendous sum of money to get it started. 213 00:14:06,020 --> 00:14:09,490 NARRATOR: By then, Borglum was a new father, 214 00:14:09,490 --> 00:14:11,559 and he liked to keep his family close. 215 00:14:11,559 --> 00:14:14,762 So with his second wife, Mary, and their two small children, 216 00:14:14,762 --> 00:14:16,631 Lincoln and Mary Ellis, 217 00:14:16,631 --> 00:14:19,700 Borglum set up a second household in Georgia. 218 00:14:19,700 --> 00:14:22,770 He gave up his smaller, more personal work-- 219 00:14:22,770 --> 00:14:24,472 pipe dreams, he'd called them-- 220 00:14:24,472 --> 00:14:26,774 and went to work at a scale 221 00:14:26,774 --> 00:14:29,977 no American artist had ever attempted. 222 00:14:43,057 --> 00:14:44,959 The Confederate monument turned out 223 00:14:44,959 --> 00:14:46,694 to be an exhilarating fight... 224 00:14:46,694 --> 00:14:49,363 and nearly disastrous. 225 00:14:49,363 --> 00:14:52,366 After a decade of planning, fund-raising and work, 226 00:14:52,366 --> 00:14:55,770 Borglum had completed less than a tenth of the carving. 227 00:14:57,405 --> 00:15:00,141 The Stone Mountain Association fired Borglum, 228 00:15:00,141 --> 00:15:02,343 accusing him of "wasteful expenditures" 229 00:15:02,343 --> 00:15:05,079 and an "ungovernable temper." 230 00:15:05,079 --> 00:15:09,417 In a fit of anger, Borglum destroyed his working models. 231 00:15:09,417 --> 00:15:12,653 The association, claiming ownership of those models, 232 00:15:12,653 --> 00:15:15,990 swore out a warrant for his arrest. 233 00:15:15,990 --> 00:15:19,026 So at the beginning of 1925, 234 00:15:19,026 --> 00:15:22,130 Gutzon Borglum was a 57-year-old fugitive, 235 00:15:22,130 --> 00:15:25,299 rheumatic, exhausted, publicly humiliated 236 00:15:25,299 --> 00:15:28,603 and deeper in debt by the day. 237 00:15:28,603 --> 00:15:31,005 VHAY: After Stone Mountain fell apart, 238 00:15:31,005 --> 00:15:34,308 it was very hardscrabble a lot of the time, 239 00:15:34,308 --> 00:15:36,244 but Mother was the one that kept payments up 240 00:15:36,244 --> 00:15:38,479 and did the things that had to be done 241 00:15:38,479 --> 00:15:40,548 and cut corners when it was possible. 242 00:15:40,548 --> 00:15:42,817 CARTER: Mary's letters would be, 243 00:15:42,817 --> 00:15:45,286 "How are we going to divide up this hundred dollars? 244 00:15:45,286 --> 00:15:47,388 "Who needs to be paid this week? 245 00:15:47,388 --> 00:15:49,157 "Who's not going to be paid? 246 00:15:49,157 --> 00:15:51,726 And when is the next amount of money coming in?" 247 00:15:51,726 --> 00:15:54,795 So they were down to the very nitty-gritty. 248 00:15:54,795 --> 00:15:59,800 NARRATOR: Gutzon raced from Washington to North Carolina to Texas 249 00:15:59,800 --> 00:16:01,736 trying to drum up new commissions, 250 00:16:01,736 --> 00:16:04,972 but the best offer fell from the sky. 251 00:16:04,972 --> 00:16:08,342 South Dakota's state historian, Doane Robinson, 252 00:16:08,342 --> 00:16:11,212 had seen newspaper accounts of people driving to Georgia 253 00:16:11,212 --> 00:16:14,649 just to see Gutzon's Stone Mountain carving. 254 00:16:14,649 --> 00:16:17,318 Robinson's far-off, nearly forgotten state 255 00:16:17,318 --> 00:16:19,654 was in dire need of roadside attraction, 256 00:16:19,654 --> 00:16:21,656 and he thought this mountain-carving business 257 00:16:21,656 --> 00:16:24,458 might be just the ticket. 258 00:16:24,458 --> 00:16:26,060 So Robinson wrote Borglum 259 00:16:26,060 --> 00:16:29,463 and asked him to consider a new project in the Black Hills, 260 00:16:29,463 --> 00:16:31,699 maybe statues of Lewis and Clark, 261 00:16:31,699 --> 00:16:33,868 Buffalo Bill, Chief Red Cloud-- 262 00:16:33,868 --> 00:16:36,671 something to draw the tourists. 263 00:16:36,671 --> 00:16:40,341 Borglum took Robinson's suggestion and ran. 264 00:16:40,341 --> 00:16:43,110 "Western figures are too parochial,"he announced. 265 00:16:43,110 --> 00:16:45,680 He would carve national heroes. 266 00:16:45,680 --> 00:16:47,715 The first three were no-brainers: 267 00:16:47,715 --> 00:16:52,620 George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln. 268 00:16:52,620 --> 00:16:55,656 The fourth would be Borglum's great personal friend 269 00:16:55,656 --> 00:16:58,759 and political hero, Teddy Roosevelt. 270 00:16:58,759 --> 00:17:01,629 And Borglum said he would carve his presidents 271 00:17:01,629 --> 00:17:05,032 on Mount Rushmore, a site he chose for its broad face 272 00:17:05,032 --> 00:17:07,268 and a southeastern exposure 273 00:17:07,268 --> 00:17:10,004 that guaranteed the most dramatic light. 274 00:17:10,004 --> 00:17:13,107 To his 12-year-old son, Lincoln, he confided: 275 00:17:13,107 --> 00:17:16,377 "Nothing but the Almighty can stop me 276 00:17:16,377 --> 00:17:18,879 from completing this task." 277 00:17:18,879 --> 00:17:22,683 TALIAFERRO: When he got the call to come to Mount Rushmore, 278 00:17:22,683 --> 00:17:25,453 this was a great chance to redeem himself, 279 00:17:25,453 --> 00:17:29,790 to do all the things he had ever wanted to do 280 00:17:29,790 --> 00:17:31,959 in a much larger scale 281 00:17:31,959 --> 00:17:36,764 than he'd even dare think about until that point. 282 00:17:36,764 --> 00:17:38,599 He could taste it 283 00:17:38,599 --> 00:17:41,502 from the second he got off the train in Rapid City. 284 00:17:44,372 --> 00:17:46,974 VHAY: He had expected Stone Mountain 285 00:17:46,974 --> 00:17:50,278 to be the crowning achievement in his career, 286 00:17:50,278 --> 00:17:53,648 and here he was presented with a bigger crown. 287 00:17:53,648 --> 00:17:57,485 It was going to be bigger, larger. 288 00:17:57,485 --> 00:17:59,687 And all he needed to do 289 00:17:59,687 --> 00:18:03,224 was to get a million dollars, or whatever, to do it. 290 00:18:04,825 --> 00:18:06,627 NARRATOR: Doane Robinson was thrilled 291 00:18:06,627 --> 00:18:09,463 and happy to let Borglum have his way with the planning. 292 00:18:09,463 --> 00:18:12,400 "After all,"he said, "God only makes a Michelangelo 293 00:18:12,400 --> 00:18:13,834 "or a Gutzon Borglum 294 00:18:13,834 --> 00:18:17,605 once every thousand years." 295 00:18:17,605 --> 00:18:21,409 The remainder of the state was less enthusiastic. 296 00:18:21,409 --> 00:18:23,044 That Mount Rushmore stood 297 00:18:23,044 --> 00:18:24,845 on ground sacred to the Lakota Sioux 298 00:18:24,845 --> 00:18:26,947 wasn't even the big problem. 299 00:18:26,947 --> 00:18:29,617 In the 1920s, South Dakotans simply didn't have 300 00:18:29,617 --> 00:18:32,953 a lot of spare cash for public monuments. 301 00:18:32,953 --> 00:18:36,791 A year after Borglum's plea for $50,000 seed money, 302 00:18:36,791 --> 00:18:39,527 locals had raised only $5,000. 303 00:18:39,527 --> 00:18:41,028 And the proposed project 304 00:18:41,028 --> 00:18:42,997 hadn't exactly brought honor to the state. 305 00:18:42,997 --> 00:18:45,666 In fact, Mount Rushmore was a bit of a knee-slapper 306 00:18:45,666 --> 00:18:47,401 around the country. 307 00:18:47,401 --> 00:18:49,470 "Borglum is about to destroy another mountain," 308 00:18:49,470 --> 00:18:51,605 wrote one newspaper back east. 309 00:18:51,605 --> 00:18:55,176 "Thank God it's in South Dakota, where no one will ever see it." 310 00:18:58,512 --> 00:19:01,148 The sculptor had only one solid asset: 311 00:19:01,148 --> 00:19:04,051 South Dakota senator Peter Norbeck. 312 00:19:04,051 --> 00:19:06,721 Peter Norbeck was the son of Norwegian immigrants, 313 00:19:06,721 --> 00:19:08,456 born in a sod dugout 314 00:19:08,456 --> 00:19:11,325 and raised poor on the South Dakota plains. 315 00:19:11,325 --> 00:19:15,629 He was stout, plainspoken, and quietly ambitious. 316 00:19:15,629 --> 00:19:19,133 As a young man, he'd made a fortune drilling wells 317 00:19:19,133 --> 00:19:21,435 and then moved to politics. 318 00:19:21,435 --> 00:19:23,237 WEGNER: Grandpa Norbeck has been described 319 00:19:23,237 --> 00:19:27,708 as as rough as the Norwegian northern pines, 320 00:19:27,708 --> 00:19:30,611 but also with the soul of an artist. 321 00:19:30,611 --> 00:19:33,381 His formal education was very limited, 322 00:19:33,381 --> 00:19:37,985 but somewhere in there, he found the interest to pursue 323 00:19:37,985 --> 00:19:42,156 these more intellectual and artistic endeavors. 324 00:19:42,156 --> 00:19:45,226 VHAY: He supported Dad in everything. 325 00:19:45,226 --> 00:19:46,994 He got very cross with him at times, 326 00:19:46,994 --> 00:19:48,562 when Dad would demand more money 327 00:19:48,562 --> 00:19:51,665 and had to have more money. 328 00:19:51,665 --> 00:19:55,770 But also, I think that Senator Norbeck was a bridge 329 00:19:55,770 --> 00:19:58,739 between Dad and the local people. 330 00:19:58,739 --> 00:20:04,378 WEGNER: He saw this as an opportunity to bring people to the Black Hills. 331 00:20:04,378 --> 00:20:05,746 Any tourists, any people 332 00:20:05,746 --> 00:20:07,848 we could bring into South Dakota from the outside 333 00:20:07,848 --> 00:20:10,017 brought their wallet, their dollars with them. 334 00:20:10,017 --> 00:20:11,685 And any outside dollars in this state 335 00:20:11,685 --> 00:20:15,189 that could be brought in were desperately needed. 336 00:20:22,062 --> 00:20:23,798 NARRATOR: What Norbeck did first 337 00:20:23,798 --> 00:20:25,666 was convince President Calvin Coolidge 338 00:20:25,666 --> 00:20:27,735 to spend the summer in the Black Hills, 339 00:20:27,735 --> 00:20:29,837 maybe take in the mountain scenery, 340 00:20:29,837 --> 00:20:31,138 do a little fishing. 341 00:20:36,243 --> 00:20:38,546 Even before Coolidge got to town, 342 00:20:38,546 --> 00:20:42,216 Rapid City was fevered with Babbitt-like boosterism. 343 00:20:42,216 --> 00:20:45,052 And the Rapid City Commercial Club renewed its drive 344 00:20:45,052 --> 00:20:48,289 to raise cash for Senator Norbeck's carving. 345 00:20:48,289 --> 00:20:50,724 By the time the president arrived, 346 00:20:50,724 --> 00:20:54,562 the Rushmore Association had $42,000 in the bank, 347 00:20:54,562 --> 00:20:56,730 and Borglum was in a lather, too, 348 00:20:56,730 --> 00:20:59,867 planning a second, and more extravagant, dedication, 349 00:20:59,867 --> 00:21:05,206 one the president could attend, with the national press in tow. 350 00:21:05,206 --> 00:21:08,576 And on that August day, Silent Cal made a speech 351 00:21:08,576 --> 00:21:11,879 that surprised even Borglum. 352 00:21:11,879 --> 00:21:13,214 He started out by saying, 353 00:21:13,214 --> 00:21:16,383 "We have come here to dedicate a cornerstone 354 00:21:16,383 --> 00:21:19,286 laid by the hand of the Almighty." 355 00:21:19,286 --> 00:21:21,255 Further in the speech, he said, 356 00:21:21,255 --> 00:21:22,857 "The people of South Dakota 357 00:21:22,857 --> 00:21:25,826 had been bearing this burden so far"-- which they had not-- 358 00:21:25,826 --> 00:21:27,862 and he thought the government ought to help. 359 00:21:27,862 --> 00:21:31,499 And this was the beginning of getting government support. 360 00:21:31,499 --> 00:21:34,335 NARRATOR: With Coolidge's support, 361 00:21:34,335 --> 00:21:36,237 Norbeck pushed a bill through Congress 362 00:21:36,237 --> 00:21:39,707 authorizing federal matching funds for Mount Rushmore: 363 00:21:39,707 --> 00:21:43,878 one government dollar for every private dollar raised. 364 00:21:43,878 --> 00:21:46,480 The problem was, in 1929, 365 00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:49,350 there had been only $50,000 raised. 366 00:21:49,350 --> 00:21:52,620 Still, with less than ten percent of his budget in hand, 367 00:21:52,620 --> 00:21:54,955 Gutzon Borglum rushed ahead, 368 00:21:54,955 --> 00:21:57,258 anxious to answer the big question: 369 00:21:57,258 --> 00:22:00,694 Could this colossal carving be done? 370 00:22:00,694 --> 00:22:05,132 It was 500 feet to the top of Mount Rushmore. 371 00:22:05,132 --> 00:22:08,068 Nobody could be sure how much carvable granite existed 372 00:22:08,068 --> 00:22:11,171 beneath the richly creviced surface. 373 00:22:11,171 --> 00:22:13,974 Long, frozen winters would make work nearly impossible 374 00:22:13,974 --> 00:22:16,310 four months a year. 375 00:22:16,310 --> 00:22:18,012 Even more troubling to Borglum 376 00:22:18,012 --> 00:22:21,782 was the pool of men available to do the work. 377 00:22:27,354 --> 00:22:30,658 Getting able bodies wasn't the hard part. 378 00:22:30,658 --> 00:22:33,761 Jobs were scarce in the Black Hills in 1929, 379 00:22:33,761 --> 00:22:35,629 and Mount Rushmore offered 380 00:22:35,629 --> 00:22:38,365 some of the highest-paying work around. 381 00:22:38,365 --> 00:22:40,834 But as dozens of men started to sign on, 382 00:22:40,834 --> 00:22:44,438 Borglum realized he was going to have to depend on locals-- 383 00:22:44,438 --> 00:22:46,874 the "untutored miners," he called them. 384 00:22:49,743 --> 00:22:54,949 SMITH: A lot of these guys were tough, rough, brawling kind of guys. 385 00:22:54,949 --> 00:22:58,986 They used to say, uh, that the Keystone Boys' playpens 386 00:22:58,986 --> 00:23:01,622 were fenced with barbed wire. 387 00:23:01,622 --> 00:23:04,224 And that they only turned the other cheek 388 00:23:04,224 --> 00:23:06,427 when they were delivering a left hook. 389 00:23:20,374 --> 00:23:23,611 MAN: It didn't take too much training, say, 390 00:23:23,611 --> 00:23:26,580 to drill holes and so forth and run a jackhammer. 391 00:23:26,580 --> 00:23:30,751 It just took a lot of guts, you might say. 392 00:23:30,751 --> 00:23:35,623 Some people went up there and worked one day, I've been told, 393 00:23:35,623 --> 00:23:37,124 and that was all they wanted. 394 00:23:37,124 --> 00:23:40,761 They couldn't stand the heighth and the dust and so forth. 395 00:23:42,730 --> 00:23:46,500 MAN: It was pretty tough for your first time going over there 396 00:23:46,500 --> 00:23:49,069 and hanging in a bosun chair 397 00:23:49,069 --> 00:23:51,472 and trying to punch holes in the granite. 398 00:23:53,474 --> 00:23:54,908 It took a lot of practice. 399 00:23:54,908 --> 00:23:57,344 And you didn't get much done your first day, 400 00:23:57,344 --> 00:23:59,246 I'll tell you that. 401 00:24:00,648 --> 00:24:03,584 Most of the jackhammers weighed 40 or 50 pounds. 402 00:24:03,584 --> 00:24:07,921 And then you had to carry your steel with you, also. 403 00:24:07,921 --> 00:24:13,127 So you had quite a load going down there. 404 00:24:16,196 --> 00:24:21,101 MAN: The wind was always a-blowing, and it'd be pretty gusty. 405 00:24:21,101 --> 00:24:23,404 The wind always blew up there, seemed like. 406 00:24:23,404 --> 00:24:29,143 They was hanging with a little 3/8-inch cable. 407 00:24:29,143 --> 00:24:32,680 And that cable looked pretty small to me, 408 00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:35,115 to hold them guys up there. 409 00:24:35,115 --> 00:24:37,985 And then they'd just shake pieces out of them 410 00:24:37,985 --> 00:24:39,753 when they'd turn them jackhammers on. 411 00:24:53,634 --> 00:24:56,070 NARRATOR: Once the men had blasted off the surface rock, 412 00:24:56,070 --> 00:24:57,838 leaving a giant egg-shaped mass 413 00:24:57,838 --> 00:25:00,207 where Washington's face could be sculpted, 414 00:25:00,207 --> 00:25:02,076 Borglum spent days watching 415 00:25:02,076 --> 00:25:04,845 the light and shadow play on the expanse, 416 00:25:04,845 --> 00:25:07,181 then decided to rotate the face 417 00:25:07,181 --> 00:25:09,416 20 degrees from his original plan. 418 00:25:09,416 --> 00:25:13,120 After that, the sculptor and assistants like Ivan Houser 419 00:25:13,120 --> 00:25:15,222 set to re-creating the studio models 420 00:25:15,222 --> 00:25:17,591 on the side of the mountain. 421 00:25:17,591 --> 00:25:20,794 The commonly used methods didn't apply. 422 00:25:20,794 --> 00:25:22,896 The mountain was simply too big. 423 00:25:22,896 --> 00:25:24,965 So Borglum turned the page back to a technique 424 00:25:24,965 --> 00:25:27,401 devised by the ancient Greeks. 425 00:25:27,401 --> 00:25:30,070 HOUSER: In doing a big piece of sculpture, 426 00:25:30,070 --> 00:25:33,373 one of the problems, of course, is the enlarging. 427 00:25:33,373 --> 00:25:38,212 You're trying to locate points in space at one scale, 428 00:25:38,212 --> 00:25:39,646 and then you try to locate 429 00:25:39,646 --> 00:25:41,615 those same points in space at another scale. 430 00:25:41,615 --> 00:25:45,352 So what they did was, you have a beam coming straight out 431 00:25:45,352 --> 00:25:47,688 from a point that turns on a swivel, 432 00:25:47,688 --> 00:25:51,024 and you can note the degrees at which it is turned. 433 00:25:51,024 --> 00:25:53,761 And so, as you turn the one on the little model and you can... 434 00:25:53,761 --> 00:25:56,396 Say it's off 30 degrees, off to the right, 435 00:25:56,396 --> 00:25:57,898 and it's out so many measurements, 436 00:25:57,898 --> 00:26:00,234 and down so far and then in so far, 437 00:26:00,234 --> 00:26:01,869 and you can locate a specific point 438 00:26:01,869 --> 00:26:04,171 on Washington's cheek, for instance. 439 00:26:04,171 --> 00:26:07,441 So then you can do the same thing up on the mountain. 440 00:26:16,116 --> 00:26:19,153 CLIFFORD: This is what they called honeycombing. 441 00:26:19,153 --> 00:26:24,491 This was the next to the last step of finishing the faces. 442 00:26:24,491 --> 00:26:26,360 And they would drill these holes in. 443 00:26:26,360 --> 00:26:29,263 The pointers or Mr. Borglum would tell them 444 00:26:29,263 --> 00:26:30,798 how deep to drill the holes. 445 00:26:30,798 --> 00:26:33,767 You can see they were taking off more rock down here 446 00:26:33,767 --> 00:26:35,035 than they were up here. 447 00:26:35,035 --> 00:26:39,840 And it was probably right close to the face, 448 00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:42,676 maybe it was on, like, on a cheek 449 00:26:42,676 --> 00:26:44,411 or something like that. 450 00:26:44,411 --> 00:26:50,818 And they would take a sharp, pointed piece of steel 451 00:26:50,818 --> 00:26:53,086 and they would hit in each one of these holes. 452 00:26:53,086 --> 00:26:55,255 Eventually, this rock would pop off. 453 00:26:55,255 --> 00:26:57,791 And then they would use a bumping hammer-- 454 00:26:57,791 --> 00:26:59,560 they called it bumping-- 455 00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:01,328 and that would smooth the rock up 456 00:27:01,328 --> 00:27:02,696 just like it is today 457 00:27:02,696 --> 00:27:05,299 that you see it on the mountain. 458 00:27:21,615 --> 00:27:23,517 NARRATOR: Independence Day, 1930, 459 00:27:23,517 --> 00:27:26,486 just more than a year from the day real work began, 460 00:27:26,486 --> 00:27:28,922 Gutzon Borglum revealed to the world 461 00:27:28,922 --> 00:27:31,725 the first great granite visage. 462 00:27:34,361 --> 00:27:36,597 July 5, Mount Rushmore was a dateline 463 00:27:36,597 --> 00:27:38,832 in papers across the country. 464 00:27:40,234 --> 00:27:43,403 Through that summer, newsreels of the dedication played 465 00:27:43,403 --> 00:27:45,873 at theaters nationwide. 466 00:27:45,873 --> 00:27:48,809 Suddenly, Rushmore was a fixed point 467 00:27:48,809 --> 00:27:51,378 in the American consciousness. 468 00:27:53,013 --> 00:27:55,315 And as work on Washington continued, 469 00:27:55,315 --> 00:27:57,217 tourists began making the trek 470 00:27:57,217 --> 00:28:00,220 to see the strange sight in the Black Hills. 471 00:28:00,220 --> 00:28:05,092 In the first year alone, 27,000 people visited Mount Rushmore, 472 00:28:05,092 --> 00:28:08,262 now billed as "the shrine of democracy." 473 00:28:09,663 --> 00:28:13,367 The early success confirmed Borglum's every plan. 474 00:28:13,367 --> 00:28:16,336 Now his men could race to the finish. 475 00:28:16,336 --> 00:28:17,638 The entire carving-- 476 00:28:17,638 --> 00:28:20,340 four figures, each complete to the waist-- 477 00:28:20,340 --> 00:28:23,410 would be done inside of four years, he figured. 478 00:28:25,345 --> 00:28:27,514 He'd figured wrong. 479 00:28:37,224 --> 00:28:40,360 Within weeks of the Washington dedication, 480 00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:42,362 bad news began to pile up. 481 00:28:42,362 --> 00:28:45,766 Borglum had spent so much on the dedication ceremony 482 00:28:45,766 --> 00:28:48,235 that money ran out at the end of July, 483 00:28:48,235 --> 00:28:51,038 and work on the mountain slowed to a crawl. 484 00:28:51,038 --> 00:28:54,308 Rushmore's great champion, Senator Peter Norbeck, 485 00:28:54,308 --> 00:28:56,977 was diagnosed with cancer. 486 00:28:56,977 --> 00:28:59,746 The next year, things only got worse. 487 00:29:02,115 --> 00:29:03,951 HOUSER: They were aware, of course, 488 00:29:03,951 --> 00:29:07,054 that there were going to be faults and cracks in the rock. 489 00:29:07,054 --> 00:29:09,957 Some of them were hard to detect. 490 00:29:11,491 --> 00:29:15,095 In fact, they started Jefferson off to Washington's right, 491 00:29:15,095 --> 00:29:17,864 and they found out there wasn't enough stone there. 492 00:29:17,864 --> 00:29:21,802 The stone was too crumbly and it just wasn't of good quality. 493 00:29:21,802 --> 00:29:26,073 CARTER: They had to blast that off after 18 months of work, 494 00:29:26,073 --> 00:29:28,575 which must have been heartbreaking to do that. 495 00:29:28,575 --> 00:29:30,978 As tight as money was, and then to blast off 496 00:29:30,978 --> 00:29:33,080 what they'd spent all that time doing. 497 00:29:37,985 --> 00:29:39,720 NARRATOR: By the end of 1931, 498 00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,657 the Rushmore Association was $16,000 in the red, 499 00:29:43,657 --> 00:29:47,561 with little hope of raising more private money. 500 00:29:47,561 --> 00:29:50,664 WEGNER: They had this almost double whammy. 501 00:29:50,664 --> 00:29:54,134 The entire country, in fact much of the world, 502 00:29:54,134 --> 00:29:58,538 was wrapped up in this horrendous financial depression. 503 00:29:59,940 --> 00:30:02,242 Then on top of that was the dust bowl days. 504 00:30:04,911 --> 00:30:07,948 There was no rain; the farmers could raise no crops. 505 00:30:07,948 --> 00:30:11,318 What little they could raise, it was almost impossible to market. 506 00:30:13,754 --> 00:30:16,123 They were leaving the state in droves. 507 00:30:16,123 --> 00:30:20,360 Those who stayed wondered why they were still here. 508 00:30:22,262 --> 00:30:23,997 And in, uh, 1932, 509 00:30:23,997 --> 00:30:27,134 the work at Rushmore had ground to a total halt. 510 00:30:27,134 --> 00:30:28,935 And again there was the specter 511 00:30:28,935 --> 00:30:31,671 of this whole thing just never being completed. 512 00:30:31,671 --> 00:30:33,974 INTERVIEWER: When do you think this work 513 00:30:33,974 --> 00:30:35,342 will be completed, Mr. Borglum? 514 00:30:35,342 --> 00:30:36,877 I'm trying to finish it 515 00:30:36,877 --> 00:30:40,614 so that the figures will be done by 1935 sufficiently... 516 00:30:40,614 --> 00:30:43,917 VHAY: My father never wanted to admit any type of failure, 517 00:30:43,917 --> 00:30:46,887 and certainly he didn't want to admit it. 518 00:30:46,887 --> 00:30:51,358 He, I'm sure, did with... with Mother, but he didn't with us. 519 00:30:51,358 --> 00:30:53,960 I mean, it was always going to be... 520 00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,663 everything was going to be all right. 521 00:30:56,663 --> 00:31:00,100 He didn't show any despair, even to Mary very much. 522 00:31:00,100 --> 00:31:03,970 One letter that I found where he was in Washington for months 523 00:31:03,970 --> 00:31:06,073 trying to get money for Rushmore. 524 00:31:06,073 --> 00:31:09,109 It was a bad time, and he wrote to her and said, 525 00:31:09,109 --> 00:31:11,545 "I'm just sick about what's happening, 526 00:31:11,545 --> 00:31:14,181 but this is the time to be courageous." 527 00:31:14,181 --> 00:31:17,751 And you know, I think his spirit just kept him going 528 00:31:17,751 --> 00:31:19,453 and Mary kept him going. 529 00:31:19,453 --> 00:31:21,354 I don't think he would have been able to carry on 530 00:31:21,354 --> 00:31:22,656 if it hadn't been for my mother. 531 00:31:22,656 --> 00:31:24,624 She was always there, 532 00:31:24,624 --> 00:31:28,361 not driving him but building up his ego, 533 00:31:28,361 --> 00:31:33,066 and making him aware that he was a great sculptor. 534 00:31:35,168 --> 00:31:37,904 NARRATOR: Even in the darkest days of Rushmore, 535 00:31:37,904 --> 00:31:39,606 Gutzon never lacked for ego. 536 00:31:39,606 --> 00:31:42,809 People who held sway, he liked to keep them informed. 537 00:31:42,809 --> 00:31:45,479 Congressmen, senators, oil tycoons, 538 00:31:45,479 --> 00:31:48,882 William Randolph Hearst, the Duke of Windsor-- 539 00:31:48,882 --> 00:31:52,786 he wired them all, and often collect. 540 00:31:52,786 --> 00:31:55,722 VHAY: He corresponded with anybody you could think of, 541 00:31:55,722 --> 00:31:57,858 and I mean from the heads of state on down 542 00:31:57,858 --> 00:31:59,860 to the... practically the garbage man. 543 00:32:01,328 --> 00:32:02,896 Probably not the garbage man 544 00:32:02,896 --> 00:32:04,965 because he probably hadn't paid them. 545 00:32:04,965 --> 00:32:06,500 (laughs) 546 00:32:16,009 --> 00:32:18,178 HAYES: He was coming across the state 547 00:32:18,178 --> 00:32:20,213 and he stopped at a little station 548 00:32:20,213 --> 00:32:22,482 and, uh, he wanted to fill up the car. 549 00:32:22,482 --> 00:32:24,951 And, uh, the young station attendant, you know, says, 550 00:32:24,951 --> 00:32:27,621 "Well, you know, I have to have money first." 551 00:32:27,621 --> 00:32:29,789 He says, "Well, don't you know who I am?" 552 00:32:29,789 --> 00:32:32,692 And the attendant said, "I know exactly who you are. 553 00:32:32,692 --> 00:32:35,128 That's why I have to have the money first." 554 00:32:35,128 --> 00:32:39,199 SMITH: He felt that he should have free gasoline if he wanted it, 555 00:32:39,199 --> 00:32:41,067 he saw movies without paying, 556 00:32:41,067 --> 00:32:43,270 and his personality was so powerful 557 00:32:43,270 --> 00:32:45,338 they let him go ahead and do it. 558 00:32:45,338 --> 00:32:46,940 As he said many times, 559 00:32:46,940 --> 00:32:49,709 "I'm giving these people in the Black Hills an asset 560 00:32:49,709 --> 00:32:51,678 "that'll bring in billions of dollars 561 00:32:51,678 --> 00:32:55,148 and they're persecuting me over a piddling parcel of groceries." 562 00:32:56,783 --> 00:33:00,187 NARRATOR: Where money was concerned, Gutzon was fearless. 563 00:33:00,187 --> 00:33:03,523 He spent himself and his projects into the hole today, 564 00:33:03,523 --> 00:33:05,859 convinced he could win more tomorrow. 565 00:33:08,094 --> 00:33:09,696 WEGNER: Borglum had this tendency 566 00:33:09,696 --> 00:33:11,364 to show up in Washington unannounced 567 00:33:11,364 --> 00:33:12,766 and appear before committees 568 00:33:12,766 --> 00:33:17,704 and attempt to schedule appointments with the president. 569 00:33:17,704 --> 00:33:20,073 He would give one set of financial projections 570 00:33:20,073 --> 00:33:23,043 to one committee or to one senator or to one congressman, 571 00:33:23,043 --> 00:33:24,945 and within a matter of hours or days, 572 00:33:24,945 --> 00:33:26,813 come up with another set of figures, 573 00:33:26,813 --> 00:33:31,017 or he could say he could finish this project for $250,000, 574 00:33:31,017 --> 00:33:33,820 when everybody sitting in the room knew 575 00:33:33,820 --> 00:33:36,189 that there was no way 576 00:33:36,189 --> 00:33:40,660 in which that entire project could be completed for $250,000. 577 00:33:40,660 --> 00:33:44,764 HOUSER: A number of times my father and Borglum were in the Senate 578 00:33:44,764 --> 00:33:46,967 seeking funding for Mount Rushmore. 579 00:33:46,967 --> 00:33:50,370 So one time they were up in the balcony at the Senate, 580 00:33:50,370 --> 00:33:52,439 and, uh, the bill was on the floor 581 00:33:52,439 --> 00:33:54,074 and one of the senators stood up 582 00:33:54,074 --> 00:33:56,843 and he was raging against Borglum, and he was calling, 583 00:33:56,843 --> 00:33:59,512 "Why are we... why are we trying to appropriate funds 584 00:33:59,512 --> 00:34:00,714 for this crazy genius?" 585 00:34:00,714 --> 00:34:02,382 And then that triggered Borglum. 586 00:34:02,382 --> 00:34:05,418 Borglum jumped to his feet, but before he could say anything 587 00:34:05,418 --> 00:34:08,288 my dad grabbed him by the coattails and pulled him down, 588 00:34:08,288 --> 00:34:10,824 and he said, "He called you a genius, didn't he?" 589 00:34:10,824 --> 00:34:13,660 (laughs) 590 00:34:15,929 --> 00:34:18,965 NARRATOR: It was Senator Norbeck who saved Mount Rushmore 591 00:34:18,965 --> 00:34:21,434 with an assist from the deepening depression. 592 00:34:21,434 --> 00:34:26,172 At the end of 1932, as the national economy slid downhill, 593 00:34:26,172 --> 00:34:29,276 President Herbert Hoover started passing out relief money, 594 00:34:29,276 --> 00:34:32,545 and Norbeck snared 100,000 federal dollars 595 00:34:32,545 --> 00:34:34,581 for jobs on the mountain. 596 00:34:34,581 --> 00:34:37,651 Then he convinced the National Park Service 597 00:34:37,651 --> 00:34:41,321 to take over the project, guaranteeing more funding. 598 00:34:41,321 --> 00:34:44,024 (explosion) 599 00:34:52,599 --> 00:34:54,567 In the spring of 1933, 600 00:34:54,567 --> 00:34:57,070 after nearly a year and a half of silence, 601 00:34:57,070 --> 00:34:59,973 work on the mountain began again. 602 00:34:59,973 --> 00:35:01,474 And the central crew was back: 603 00:35:01,474 --> 00:35:04,778 Hoot Leach, Howdy Peterson and his brother Merle, 604 00:35:04,778 --> 00:35:10,283 Jimmy Champion, Whiskey Art Johnson, Palooka Payne. 605 00:35:11,785 --> 00:35:16,122 They all knew they'd be shut down again for some reason, 606 00:35:16,122 --> 00:35:18,191 but they came back just the same. 607 00:35:20,493 --> 00:35:22,729 SMITH: One of the great miracles of Rushmore 608 00:35:22,729 --> 00:35:25,432 is the miracle of the men, those dedicated guys, 609 00:35:25,432 --> 00:35:27,767 the Red Andersons, the Hoot Leaches, 610 00:35:27,767 --> 00:35:29,602 the Peterson boys and so on 611 00:35:29,602 --> 00:35:33,373 who came back and came back and came back and came back. 612 00:35:36,176 --> 00:35:38,211 CLIFFORD: Had they not come back, 613 00:35:38,211 --> 00:35:41,481 there would be no Mount Rushmore as we know it today 614 00:35:41,481 --> 00:35:43,350 because Mr. Borglum, 615 00:35:43,350 --> 00:35:46,953 it was impossible for him to train a new crew every year. 616 00:35:46,953 --> 00:35:49,756 But these men were dedicated to the mountain. 617 00:35:49,756 --> 00:35:53,426 When the mountain would shut down for lack of money 618 00:35:53,426 --> 00:35:57,630 or in the wintertime, they'd all have to find another job. 619 00:35:57,630 --> 00:35:59,666 But when the spring would come around 620 00:35:59,666 --> 00:36:01,735 and they'd get the call to come back, 621 00:36:01,735 --> 00:36:03,536 they'd quit what they were doing 622 00:36:03,536 --> 00:36:05,705 and come back to work at the mountain. 623 00:36:07,507 --> 00:36:10,977 SMITH: Red Anderson said, "At first it was just a job 624 00:36:10,977 --> 00:36:13,646 and just a crazy kind of a job at that." 625 00:36:13,646 --> 00:36:17,217 But as time went by, all of this started to change 626 00:36:17,217 --> 00:36:21,488 and they developed a sense, came together, fused in a sense 627 00:36:21,488 --> 00:36:24,891 that they were creating a great thing. 628 00:36:27,961 --> 00:36:31,064 NARRATOR: The men stuck it out in spite of their boss-- 629 00:36:31,064 --> 00:36:34,567 the Chief, they called him, but only behind his back. 630 00:36:34,567 --> 00:36:38,004 Borglum rarely talked to his men, except to give orders. 631 00:36:38,004 --> 00:36:40,807 "He's a heck of a stone carver," said one, 632 00:36:40,807 --> 00:36:42,942 "but he ain't no sweet talker." 633 00:36:42,942 --> 00:36:44,644 BORGLUM: I'm not satisfied 634 00:36:44,644 --> 00:36:48,248 with how it turns under there and comes against the collar. 635 00:36:48,248 --> 00:36:49,616 You go on down now, Payne. 636 00:36:49,616 --> 00:36:52,652 I want those points very carefully examined. 637 00:36:52,652 --> 00:36:56,089 I'll be down there with you in a few minutes. 638 00:36:56,089 --> 00:36:59,392 VHAY: Dad might get furious at them if they were stupid, 639 00:36:59,392 --> 00:37:01,561 because he could not stand stupidity. 640 00:37:01,561 --> 00:37:03,463 Anybody could make a mistake once, 641 00:37:03,463 --> 00:37:04,998 but not two or three times, 642 00:37:04,998 --> 00:37:06,933 and if they did two or three times 643 00:37:06,933 --> 00:37:08,802 he would usually have them fired. 644 00:37:08,802 --> 00:37:11,137 And that was another job that Lincoln had, 645 00:37:11,137 --> 00:37:12,739 because if it was a good man, 646 00:37:12,739 --> 00:37:15,775 Lincoln would have to talk him into coming back again. 647 00:37:15,775 --> 00:37:18,011 And then Dad would be sort of surprised 648 00:37:18,011 --> 00:37:19,646 to see him, and then he'd say, 649 00:37:19,646 --> 00:37:21,714 "What have you been doing, Lincoln?" 650 00:37:21,714 --> 00:37:26,820 NARRATOR: Lincoln Borglum, Gutzon's only son, was just 21 years old 651 00:37:26,820 --> 00:37:29,856 when the men went to work on the new Jefferson head. 652 00:37:29,856 --> 00:37:31,524 But despite Lincoln's youth, 653 00:37:31,524 --> 00:37:34,461 Gutzon left his son in charge of the mountain 654 00:37:34,461 --> 00:37:36,963 during his long and frequent absences. 655 00:37:36,963 --> 00:37:39,799 CLIFFORD: He grew up with the mountain. 656 00:37:39,799 --> 00:37:42,202 Working so close with his father, 657 00:37:42,202 --> 00:37:44,103 it just had to be catchy. 658 00:37:44,103 --> 00:37:45,805 I mean, he had a vision also 659 00:37:45,805 --> 00:37:48,308 of what the mountain was going to be like. 660 00:37:48,308 --> 00:37:50,844 You would never see him sitting down. 661 00:37:50,844 --> 00:37:55,148 If you'd look up, why, Lincoln would be up on top looking down 662 00:37:55,148 --> 00:37:58,685 or looking at the faces where the men were carving. 663 00:37:58,685 --> 00:38:01,287 He was all over the mountain. 664 00:38:01,287 --> 00:38:05,658 You never saw him get mad or chew anyone out. 665 00:38:05,658 --> 00:38:11,130 You could laugh with Lincoln and... and have a great time. 666 00:38:11,130 --> 00:38:16,836 When we went on our baseball trips, Lincoln would always go, 667 00:38:16,836 --> 00:38:20,807 and if we did something good, why, he'd pat us on the back 668 00:38:20,807 --> 00:38:23,576 and tell us what a good job we'd done. 669 00:38:23,576 --> 00:38:25,712 And he was just a great guy. 670 00:38:26,980 --> 00:38:29,516 NARRATOR: Lincoln had a calm, easy manner 671 00:38:29,516 --> 00:38:31,985 his father relied on more than anything 672 00:38:31,985 --> 00:38:34,153 to mend relationships Gutzon broke. 673 00:38:34,153 --> 00:38:36,155 And throughout the mid-'30s, 674 00:38:36,155 --> 00:38:38,725 Gutzon was more combative than ever. 675 00:38:40,326 --> 00:38:43,396 The Jefferson head continued to vex. 676 00:38:43,396 --> 00:38:47,934 The men blasted down 60 feet to find carvable rock, 677 00:38:47,934 --> 00:38:50,503 but even then, huge fissures cut through the face. 678 00:38:50,503 --> 00:38:53,406 And there was a mass of feldspar that had to be dug out, 679 00:38:53,406 --> 00:38:56,509 leaving a gaping hole on the president's lip. 680 00:38:58,111 --> 00:38:59,812 Using Borglum's concoction 681 00:38:59,812 --> 00:39:02,682 of white lead, linseed oil and granite dust, 682 00:39:02,682 --> 00:39:06,553 the men filled in the cracks and divots as best they could. 683 00:39:06,553 --> 00:39:08,888 But it all took time and money. 684 00:39:08,888 --> 00:39:11,491 And with the National Park Service 685 00:39:11,491 --> 00:39:13,560 now overseeing the project, 686 00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:16,029 it was up to a Rapid City farm implements dealer 687 00:39:16,029 --> 00:39:17,564 named John Boland 688 00:39:17,564 --> 00:39:20,500 to make sure money was spent according to federal guidelines 689 00:39:20,500 --> 00:39:23,469 and not Gutzon's. 690 00:39:23,469 --> 00:39:27,607 When Borglum needed money, he had to go to Boland and beg, 691 00:39:27,607 --> 00:39:30,076 and the sculptor grew to resent it. 692 00:39:30,076 --> 00:39:34,113 "I've got to go to Rapid City," he told Red Anderson one day, 693 00:39:34,113 --> 00:39:37,750 "and punch a certain son of a bitch right in the nose." 694 00:39:37,750 --> 00:39:39,319 Other days, 695 00:39:39,319 --> 00:39:42,755 Borglum threatened to walk away from Mount Rushmore entirely, 696 00:39:42,755 --> 00:39:46,459 leaving the unfinished monument like a scar on the Black Hills. 697 00:39:46,459 --> 00:39:47,794 With so much at stake, 698 00:39:47,794 --> 00:39:50,630 Senator Peter Norbeck's most critical job 699 00:39:50,630 --> 00:39:54,534 was handling the explosive and unpredictable artist. 700 00:39:54,534 --> 00:39:57,670 WEGNER: Grandpa Norbeck was the one person 701 00:39:57,670 --> 00:39:59,973 whom Borglum respected enough 702 00:39:59,973 --> 00:40:03,843 to accept his judgment and conclusion about things. 703 00:40:03,843 --> 00:40:08,348 And in... in a number of his heated arguments and conflicts 704 00:40:08,348 --> 00:40:10,383 with Boland in particular, 705 00:40:10,383 --> 00:40:13,419 but by no means confined to John Boland, 706 00:40:13,419 --> 00:40:16,089 Grandpa Norbeck was able to step in and resolve 707 00:40:16,089 --> 00:40:19,092 or at least partially resolve some of the conflicts. 708 00:40:19,092 --> 00:40:21,794 And then something would erupt all over again. 709 00:40:23,596 --> 00:40:27,867 NARRATOR: By the end of 1934, Peter Norbeck had had his fill. 710 00:40:27,867 --> 00:40:31,738 His four-year fight with cancer had drained his energy 711 00:40:31,738 --> 00:40:33,773 and his good humor. 712 00:40:33,773 --> 00:40:36,175 "I have lately come to feel that you will do something 713 00:40:36,175 --> 00:40:38,211 that will prevent the completion of Rushmore," 714 00:40:38,211 --> 00:40:39,679 he wrote to Borglum. 715 00:40:39,679 --> 00:40:42,949 "I have made over seven years of effort in this work. 716 00:40:42,949 --> 00:40:46,019 "It's been a heavy drain on my strength and purse. 717 00:40:46,019 --> 00:40:47,587 It keeps getting worse." 718 00:40:49,155 --> 00:40:51,391 But even as cancer ate away at him 719 00:40:51,391 --> 00:40:53,426 and took his ability to speak, 720 00:40:53,426 --> 00:40:57,430 Peter Norbeck would not let the Rushmore project fall apart. 721 00:40:57,430 --> 00:41:01,467 In 1935, he strode into the Senate one last time 722 00:41:01,467 --> 00:41:04,570 and won a new $200,000 appropriation. 723 00:41:04,570 --> 00:41:08,241 But he knew it would be his last big fight. 724 00:41:09,876 --> 00:41:13,479 As the senator neared death, he was philosophical. 725 00:41:13,479 --> 00:41:17,383 "A week after I am gone, they will start to forget me. 726 00:41:17,383 --> 00:41:20,386 "A decade, and most people of South Dakota 727 00:41:20,386 --> 00:41:23,189 will be unable to even recall my name." 728 00:41:23,189 --> 00:41:27,060 It was Borglum's name, he thought, that would endure. 729 00:41:28,861 --> 00:41:31,130 But in the summer of 1936, 730 00:41:31,130 --> 00:41:33,633 Peter Norbeck was front and center 731 00:41:33,633 --> 00:41:36,436 to see President Franklin Roosevelt dedicate 732 00:41:36,436 --> 00:41:38,671 the hard-won Jefferson sculpture. 733 00:41:45,745 --> 00:41:48,748 ROOSEVELT: There were two people 734 00:41:48,748 --> 00:41:52,318 who told me about this in the early days. 735 00:41:52,318 --> 00:41:54,754 One of them, Mr. Borglum. 736 00:41:54,754 --> 00:41:57,523 And the other, Senator Norbeck. 737 00:41:57,523 --> 00:42:00,326 (applause) 738 00:42:13,005 --> 00:42:19,011 WEGNER: It was one of the supreme days of my grandfather's life. 739 00:42:19,011 --> 00:42:22,181 I think for him, uh... I... at least I have wondered 740 00:42:22,181 --> 00:42:25,284 if it didn't become a little like that of Borglum, 741 00:42:25,284 --> 00:42:29,288 that this was one of the crowning accomplishments 742 00:42:29,288 --> 00:42:32,625 of his life, to have made this possible. 743 00:42:32,625 --> 00:42:34,627 As my grandfather had said 744 00:42:34,627 --> 00:42:38,865 that Mount Rushmore is no longer a joke, it's no longer a dream. 745 00:42:38,865 --> 00:42:41,534 It's real, it's there. 746 00:43:01,921 --> 00:43:04,223 CLIFFORD: Mr. Borglum always complained 747 00:43:04,223 --> 00:43:07,226 that people bothered him when he was doing his work 748 00:43:07,226 --> 00:43:08,828 but he would always stop 749 00:43:08,828 --> 00:43:12,298 and if someone wanted to ask a question or something like that, 750 00:43:12,298 --> 00:43:15,735 he'd like to stop and talk to the people, too, 751 00:43:15,735 --> 00:43:19,172 so he could explain what he was accomplishing. 752 00:43:19,172 --> 00:43:21,974 He used to tell people, "The faces are in the mountain. 753 00:43:21,974 --> 00:43:23,943 All I have to do is bring them out." 754 00:43:27,780 --> 00:43:32,618 CARTER: He never gave up seeing it as great art. 755 00:43:32,618 --> 00:43:34,754 And a lot of people would argue with that, 756 00:43:34,754 --> 00:43:36,923 that it was more of an engineering project 757 00:43:36,923 --> 00:43:39,425 than anything else, but he really saw it as art, 758 00:43:39,425 --> 00:43:41,294 that he was going to bring 759 00:43:41,294 --> 00:43:44,297 the life of those four people to the forefront, 760 00:43:44,297 --> 00:43:48,134 just as you would if you were doing a small statue of them. 761 00:43:53,005 --> 00:43:56,142 TALIAFERRO: As you get closer to Mount Rushmore, 762 00:43:56,142 --> 00:43:59,145 you can almost see the thumbprint 763 00:43:59,145 --> 00:44:03,883 of a sculptor's hand in clay. 764 00:44:03,883 --> 00:44:07,520 Borglum would study it at different times of day, 765 00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,190 in different kinds of light, and make adjustments 766 00:44:11,190 --> 00:44:14,293 the way an artist would make adjustments 767 00:44:14,293 --> 00:44:18,865 with a little knife or with a little chisel in the studio-- 768 00:44:18,865 --> 00:44:21,901 little fiddling things with the mountain 769 00:44:21,901 --> 00:44:26,706 that I'm sure cannot be seen from the observation deck today, 770 00:44:26,706 --> 00:44:28,541 but mattered only to Borglum. 771 00:44:35,915 --> 00:44:38,251 NARRATOR: Even as he passed age 70, 772 00:44:38,251 --> 00:44:41,120 Gutzon Borglum was still trying to find ways 773 00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:42,889 to vivify his carving. 774 00:44:42,889 --> 00:44:44,690 In 1938 and '39, 775 00:44:44,690 --> 00:44:47,093 Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt 776 00:44:47,093 --> 00:44:49,662 were rounding into recognizable form, 777 00:44:49,662 --> 00:44:53,466 but the sculptor was still worrying every site and shading. 778 00:44:55,568 --> 00:44:58,638 "Have to climb down over the face of Washington 779 00:44:58,638 --> 00:45:01,607 and back up the face of Jefferson,"he wrote. 780 00:45:01,607 --> 00:45:06,412 "I ought to be getting tired of it all, but I'm not. 781 00:45:06,412 --> 00:45:09,382 "I now see that I'll be able to make a real work of art 782 00:45:09,382 --> 00:45:10,917 "of this big group. 783 00:45:10,917 --> 00:45:14,320 "Back in my heart, that has been a doubt for many years. 784 00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:16,455 "I really have no help in that. 785 00:45:16,455 --> 00:45:19,792 In that, I'm absolutely alone." 786 00:45:22,895 --> 00:45:27,233 It was an image he cultivated, this lonely fighter's posture, 787 00:45:27,233 --> 00:45:29,435 but there were people whose contributions 788 00:45:29,435 --> 00:45:31,137 even Gutzon could not deny. 789 00:45:32,672 --> 00:45:34,540 Borglum may have devised the plan 790 00:45:34,540 --> 00:45:37,009 to give a twinkle to the presidential eyes, 791 00:45:37,009 --> 00:45:39,011 but it was the workmen who sculpted 792 00:45:39,011 --> 00:45:41,047 the two-foot long shafts of granite 793 00:45:41,047 --> 00:45:42,915 in the middle of each pupil, 794 00:45:42,915 --> 00:45:46,085 so that sunlight bouncing off the exposed point 795 00:45:46,085 --> 00:45:48,187 gave life to the eyes. 796 00:45:49,922 --> 00:45:52,425 CARTER: Gutzon seemed to have complained a lot 797 00:45:52,425 --> 00:45:55,261 about the unskilled workers that he was faced with, 798 00:45:55,261 --> 00:45:57,563 but actually he was very proud of the men 799 00:45:57,563 --> 00:45:59,231 and very proud of the fact 800 00:45:59,231 --> 00:46:02,568 that he'd been able to train these people, who were miners 801 00:46:02,568 --> 00:46:03,836 and who were just local, 802 00:46:03,836 --> 00:46:05,671 who'd never worked on a mountain before, 803 00:46:05,671 --> 00:46:07,073 didn't know anything about art, 804 00:46:07,073 --> 00:46:09,475 and that he'd been able to take them and train them 805 00:46:09,475 --> 00:46:11,277 into doing what he wanted done. 806 00:46:11,277 --> 00:46:15,014 SMITH: There were things about him that bothered them very much, 807 00:46:15,014 --> 00:46:17,850 but down underneath, they developed a loyalty. 808 00:46:17,850 --> 00:46:21,887 It's amazing-- they developed a basic loyalty to Gutzon Borglum. 809 00:46:21,887 --> 00:46:27,593 With all his flamboyance, unpredictability, irascibility, 810 00:46:27,593 --> 00:46:31,197 there was some kind of a flame in the man-- 811 00:46:31,197 --> 00:46:33,366 a charisma, a something-- 812 00:46:33,366 --> 00:46:36,068 that inspired a deeper loyalty. 813 00:46:38,237 --> 00:46:41,240 NARRATOR: By 1940, Gutzon Borglum had made himself 814 00:46:41,240 --> 00:46:42,875 someone extraordinary. 815 00:46:42,875 --> 00:46:45,244 He was the man who carved mountains 816 00:46:45,244 --> 00:46:47,747 and he stood America's highest peak. 817 00:46:47,747 --> 00:46:49,882 He'd achieved celebrity, 818 00:46:49,882 --> 00:46:54,453 even pitching ads for Studebaker and Bromo Seltzer. 819 00:46:54,453 --> 00:46:56,022 (explosion) 820 00:46:56,022 --> 00:47:00,493 Still, Gutzon saw so much to be done on his mountain. 821 00:47:00,493 --> 00:47:03,462 He meant to extend the sculptures down to the waist, 822 00:47:03,462 --> 00:47:05,398 was at work on a Hall of Records-- 823 00:47:05,398 --> 00:47:06,966 a cavernous time capsule 824 00:47:06,966 --> 00:47:09,201 for storing the important documents 825 00:47:09,201 --> 00:47:10,936 of the American democracy. 826 00:47:10,936 --> 00:47:12,405 But more than anything, 827 00:47:12,405 --> 00:47:14,974 he was still trying to transform his mountain 828 00:47:14,974 --> 00:47:16,275 into a work of art, 829 00:47:16,275 --> 00:47:18,544 fighting the one thing he couldn't beat: 830 00:47:18,544 --> 00:47:20,146 time itself. 831 00:47:25,518 --> 00:47:27,353 At the beginning of 1941, 832 00:47:27,353 --> 00:47:32,091 the coming world war overwhelmed Mount Rushmore. 833 00:47:32,091 --> 00:47:33,492 After a dozen years, 834 00:47:33,492 --> 00:47:36,262 Congress finally cut off funding for good. 835 00:47:38,397 --> 00:47:41,834 A week later, Gutzon Borglum was dead, 836 00:47:41,834 --> 00:47:45,104 suddenly and unexpectedly at age 73, 837 00:47:45,104 --> 00:47:47,673 from complications following surgery. 838 00:47:54,847 --> 00:47:56,749 WEGNER: Lincoln Borglum, of course, 839 00:47:56,749 --> 00:47:58,784 had taken over after his father died. 840 00:47:58,784 --> 00:48:02,288 By then, a major part of the work had been completed, 841 00:48:02,288 --> 00:48:04,523 but there were still a fair amount 842 00:48:04,523 --> 00:48:06,692 of trimming and cleaning up to do 843 00:48:06,692 --> 00:48:10,196 around the faces and... and the collars and shoulders 844 00:48:10,196 --> 00:48:11,764 of some of the figures. 845 00:48:11,764 --> 00:48:13,666 And the great hall of records, 846 00:48:13,666 --> 00:48:16,368 which was... had been another great ambition 847 00:48:16,368 --> 00:48:17,837 and dream of Borglum's, 848 00:48:17,837 --> 00:48:20,106 pretty much perished in the process. 849 00:48:23,442 --> 00:48:27,246 The work at Rushmore just sort of gradually drew to a close. 850 00:49:02,882 --> 00:49:06,585 NARRATOR: It took 14 years to carve Mount Rushmore. 851 00:49:06,585 --> 00:49:10,556 Men removed half a million tons of granite, 852 00:49:10,556 --> 00:49:13,626 driving 120 feet deep in places. 853 00:49:13,626 --> 00:49:17,663 George Washington's face is 60 feet long, his nose 20, 854 00:49:17,663 --> 00:49:20,966 and each eye is 11 feet wide. 855 00:49:20,966 --> 00:49:24,170 Roosevelt's mustache is 20 feet across; 856 00:49:24,170 --> 00:49:26,438 Lincoln's mole, 16 inches. 857 00:49:29,708 --> 00:49:35,548 The carving cost $989,992.32, 858 00:49:35,548 --> 00:49:39,185 almost all of it from the United States treasury. 859 00:49:41,687 --> 00:49:44,790 For the money, America got the biggest and oddest monument 860 00:49:44,790 --> 00:49:46,158 on the face of the earth, 861 00:49:46,158 --> 00:49:48,394 and one of the most compelling. 862 00:49:48,394 --> 00:49:52,431 Since 1930, more than 50 million people have made pilgrimage 863 00:49:52,431 --> 00:49:54,700 to the remote cliffside shrine. 864 00:50:01,607 --> 00:50:03,275 CARTER: I think in some ways, 865 00:50:03,275 --> 00:50:05,277 Mount Rushmore was the worst legacy 866 00:50:05,277 --> 00:50:07,580 that... that Gutzon Borglum could leave, 867 00:50:07,580 --> 00:50:10,616 because he always will be known 868 00:50:10,616 --> 00:50:14,386 as the sculptor who did Mount Rushmore. 869 00:50:14,386 --> 00:50:17,256 And yet at the time that he started the mountain, 870 00:50:17,256 --> 00:50:18,791 when he was 60 years old, 871 00:50:18,791 --> 00:50:20,593 he was well known for being a sculptor 872 00:50:20,593 --> 00:50:23,829 of beautiful monuments and beautiful pieces. 873 00:50:23,829 --> 00:50:26,131 And he was probably on his way 874 00:50:26,131 --> 00:50:30,002 to having a reputation as a great American sculptor. 875 00:50:30,002 --> 00:50:34,139 I think that was really overshadowed by Rushmore. 876 00:50:50,889 --> 00:50:53,993 CLIFFORD: I look up on the mountain 877 00:50:53,993 --> 00:50:59,531 and I think of... of Mr. Borglum-- 878 00:50:59,531 --> 00:51:00,933 what a great man he was, 879 00:51:00,933 --> 00:51:04,837 what a wonderful sculptor he was. 880 00:51:04,837 --> 00:51:08,941 I think of Lincoln, who was a friend to all of the men. 881 00:51:12,244 --> 00:51:17,583 And then I think of all the men that I worked with and knew, 882 00:51:17,583 --> 00:51:25,057 and how dedicated these men were to the mountain, 883 00:51:25,057 --> 00:51:27,159 and they're all gone now. 884 00:51:31,764 --> 00:51:37,269 And... 885 00:51:37,269 --> 00:51:39,538 And I have to stop now. 886 00:51:39,538 --> 00:51:40,706 (chuckles) 887 00:51:44,677 --> 00:51:48,347 (crickets chirping) 888 00:51:48,347 --> 00:51:51,517 NARRATOR: Like its sculptor, Mount Rushmore is loud, 889 00:51:51,517 --> 00:51:56,121 demanding of attention, and maddening. 890 00:51:56,121 --> 00:51:58,991 To naturalists, the carving is an eyesore; 891 00:51:58,991 --> 00:52:01,427 to Native Americans, a desecration. 892 00:52:01,427 --> 00:52:04,863 It stands as a monument to energy and possibility, 893 00:52:04,863 --> 00:52:06,332 to national pride, 894 00:52:06,332 --> 00:52:10,235 and an often unbecoming national self-satisfaction. 895 00:52:11,870 --> 00:52:15,474 And like the biggest and boldest creations in America, 896 00:52:15,474 --> 00:52:19,111 Mount Rushmore was not built on good intentions alone. 897 00:52:19,111 --> 00:52:20,979 It also stands as a monument 898 00:52:20,979 --> 00:52:23,382 to the colossal, sometimes wounding, 899 00:52:23,382 --> 00:52:26,952 and surprisingly contagious ambition of a single man. 900 00:52:29,355 --> 00:52:32,925 BORGLUM: I am allowing an extra three inches 901 00:52:32,925 --> 00:52:36,695 on all the features of the various presidents 902 00:52:36,695 --> 00:52:38,831 in order to provide stone 903 00:52:38,831 --> 00:52:42,000 for the wear and tear of the elements, 904 00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:44,203 which cuts the granite down an inch 905 00:52:44,203 --> 00:52:46,038 in a hundred thousand years. 906 00:52:46,038 --> 00:52:48,674 Three inches would require 300,000 years 907 00:52:48,674 --> 00:52:50,976 to bring the work down to the point 908 00:52:50,976 --> 00:52:53,078 that I would like to finish it. 909 00:52:53,078 --> 00:52:56,548 In other words, the work will not be done 910 00:52:56,548 --> 00:53:00,152 for another 300,000 years as it should be.