Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

In those days Gutzon Borglum found time to smile once in a while, although anybody who knew the trials of mountain carving might have wondered why. He had been written down for a comfortable part of a million-dollar memorial project. Seldom, during any one carving period, did he get much of it. Some years he got none. People were donating toward Rushmore begrudgingly in nickels and dimes. He was always shorthanded. The experts he needed couldn’t exist on the cash available. Somebody raised the price of electricity. Somebody dismantled the Diesel engine. There were wrangles over concessions and concessionaires and small-town politics. There were road troubles, and supplies were late. And there were other things. The question of why anybody should wish to become a topflight sculptor seemed unlikely to be answered—ever.

The head of Washington was officially unveiled on July 4, 1930. The rest of the cliff was unchanged, and Washington’s chin seemed to rest on the ledge from which it had been carved. But when the great flag swung aside to reveal the sculptured face the witnesses, strangers to Stone Mountain, felt that from then on the memorial would never die.

J. S. Cullinan, first president of the Rushmore Commission, presided and gave the monument its name: “The authority of Congress to carve colossal portraits of these great men in the granite of the Black Hills has created a perpetual Shrine for political Democracy.” And Borglum, tired, dejected, almost conquered by a world where nobody ever seemed to want to do anything, was pleased with that. A head was finished on Rushmore, and the dullest of these laymen looking at it knew that it was a finely done piece of sculpture. He heard someone saying that it would be there forever, and he hoped that it would last longer than Lee’s at Stone Mountain.

The crowd at the unveiling got safely back to Rapid City with no trouble at all. And nobody thought of Borglum’s connection with the district’s good roads.

In the spring of 1930, trying to get from Rapid City to Keystone with two cars and tow aids, he had been ditched six times. He never got to Mount Rushmore that week. However, he did get to the telegraph office and sent word to President Hoover that the roads were impossible and that he would shut down the project unless conditions were improved and men could get to their work. Hoover sent the message to Governor William J. Bulow, who in turn made an appointment for his state road commission to meet the sculptor that week.

Meanwhile the governor telegraphed this message to Mr. Cullinan:

BORGLUM HAS THE TEMPERAMENT OF ALL GOOD ARTISTS, GETS MAD WHEN HE CANNOT CONTROL WEATHER CONDITIONS. NOTHING SERIOUS EXCEPT THAT HE GOT A NEW EXPERIENCE AND A NEW TOUCH OF LIFE. AM SENDING HIGHWAY ENGINEER TO SEE WHAT CAN BE DONE. WITH GOD’S AID AND PATIENCE HOPE TO GET HIM SMOOTHED OUT.

Within three days they had planned the beautiful road now leading from Rapid City to the memorial. Strange as it seems, South Dakota spent $480,000, plus a quarter of a million on other roads, to reach a monument on which she had not spent a dollar. Meanwhile Senator Norbeck with his Custer State Park Commission was working on a road approaching Rushmore from the opposite direction by way of Iron Mountain.

Iron Mountain Road is one of the country’s finest examples of what can be done with economical engineering. Engineer Charles E. Smith who laid it out hadn’t much money to spend. The highway runs along part of its highly beautiful journey between Keystone and Grace Coolidge Creek on two lanes that are widely separated. It climbs terrific grades on corkscrew uplifts built of pine logs. It is well paved, well graded and safe.

One of the features of the highway is said to have come by accident. Work was started from the south end and presently struck a mountain that had to be tunneled. The hole was surveyed with no plan save to keep it in line with the approach already built. When the miners finally broke through they were looking into the face of Washington on Rushmore. The two remaining tunnels were cut at the same angle, framing the memorial with a showmanship worthy of Gutzon Borglum himself. Borglum was intensely pleased. “Norbeck’s Iron Mountain Road,” he said, “is as much a work of art as the carving of the mountain.”