His Mount Rushmore Memorial presents to posterity four great Americans who upheld the rights and equalities of all mankind, and who were themselves the very personifications of Americanism.
Their noble heads are lofty enough to mingle with the clouds, and the parading lights of sun and moon and stars, and the processionals of rain and snow and mist give them a beauty that is always changing yet everlastingly changeless.
Only a great soul and a great artist could have conceived or achieved such a monument to them and to himself. His gifts of spirit and execution were, I feel, unsurpassed by anything of their kind in the history of the world.
The Memorial in winter with a light fall of snow softening the surrounding landscape.
FROM THE BEGINNING
By MRS. GUTZON BORGLUM
A nation’s memorials are a record of its civilization and the artist who builds them is the instrument of his time. He is inspired by the same forces that influence the nation’s destiny—the greater the period, the greater the art. The artist cannot escape his destiny. Like the “Hound of Heaven” it “pursues him down the years,” forces him to leave his home, to go into exile, to combat mountains even, to accomplish what must be.
How else can we explain why a man should abandon a comfortable way of life, among pleasant surroundings, to hurl himself against a gigantic rock, to cling like a human fly to a perpendicular peak, to struggle with hostile human nature, in order to carve against the sky a record of the great experiment in democracy on this continent—a record which will live on and be an inspiration to future generations, a shrine to be visited, even after the thing it commemorated may have passed.
This is the history of Rushmore told in a few words. The contributing factors are of interest and should be related but two outstanding facts are that a few kindred souls, giants in their day, fostered a form of democratic government and established a great nation and that a hundred and fifty years later another group of Americans realized the importance of making a record in the granite for all time of what manner of men they were and what they achieved.