When water gets into the cracks and pores of the rocks and freezes, it exerts an enormous pressure, a pressure that will spall off flakes and blocks of rock. The artist and his associates, fully aware of this hazard, have guarded against it. All cracks and fissures have been carefully avoided in the sculpturing so far as is possible. Such as have been impossible to avoid are being sealed to prevent the ingress of water, thus inhibiting to a very large extent both frost action and chemical weathering.
We have traced in part the geological history of the Mount Rushmore region, hoping that by learning something of its past we may predict something of its future. We see the hazards to which the memorial is exposed. We must frankly recognize them and guard against them so far as possible, as it would be folly to ignore them. If the science of geology can do no more in a practical way for mankind than to point out dangers and sound warnings, it does a worth while service. “How long will the memorial last?” Geology cannot answer specifically. An eminent geologist has already given as definite an answer as it is possible to give, and I can do no better than to close by quoting from the address given by the late Dr. C. C. O’Harra at the unveiling of the head of Washington.
“How long will Mount Rushmore last? Many millions of years. The number nobody knows. How long will endure this monumental, sculptured figure of the Father of our Country which today we unveil? One hundred years? Yes. One thousand years? Yes. A hundred thousand years? In all likelihood, yes. A half million years? Possibly so, nobody knows. The time at any rate will be long, far longer than we can readily comprehend. And this doubtless will abundantly suffice.”
THE HALL OF RECORDS AND GREAT STAIRWAY
By LINCOLN BORGLUM
The Hall of Records and Stairway have been part of the Memorial plan from the beginning and are provided for in the so-called “Rushmore Bill” of 1938. A good start has been made in the carving of the Hall, which already has been excavated to the extent of seventy feet. Great care has to be exercised in the use of dynamite in carving this hall, as in carving the faces on the mountain, not to injure the stone which is to remain. Careless explosions of large amounts of powder might crumble the walls.
The Hall is located about two thirds of the way up to the mountain: the entrance to it is in a small gorge or canyon, cut by the ice aeons ago, to the right of the carved faces as one looks at them from below. The Hall is on the opposite side of the gorge from the heads and is not under them. The following is quoted from Mr. Borglum’s plan.
“The façade to the Hall’s entrance is the mountain wall 140 feet high; supporting pylons, cut into the mountain, flank the entrance. The entrance door itself is 12 feet wide and 20 feet high; the walls are plain, dressed granite and of a fine color. I want to finish the inner entrance wall in mosaic of blue and gold lapis. The depth to the door entrance from the outer façade is 20 feet. The door, swung on a six inch offset of the wall, will be of bronze and glass. Small, carefully modeled bronze figures of historic importance from Columbus and Raleigh to the present day will ornament the doors or be modeled into the supporting frame. The walls of the entrance will carry in gilded bronze immediately within the entrance ancient Indian symbols; British, French, Spanish and American seals.
“The floor of the Hall will be 100 by 80 by 32 feet to an arched ceiling. At the height of fifteen feet an historic frieze, four feet wide, will encircle the entire room. Recesses will be cut into these walls to be filled with bronze and glass cabinets, which will hold the records stamped on aluminum sheets, rolled separately and placed in tubes. Busts of our leaders in all human activities will occupy the recesses between the cabinets. The original thought of a hall of human records I developed at Stone Mountain in Georgia and my drawings and full plans are extant; that was never completed.
“The records of electricity, beginning with Franklin, which has given us light, heat, music, the radio, the telegraph, the telephone and controls in power the extent of which we can hardly imagine, must be here, together with the records of literature, the records of travel, immigration, religious development and also the record of perhaps the largest contribution that we have made to humanity, which has been free controlled peace, a government of the people, by and for the people. Struggle as we will that great contribution is today the cause for the real unrest of Europe. Despotism, tyranny of every form is fighting us wherever it can, to take away from humanity the power freedom gives it—the power that freedom has given America.
