Every year, around two million visitors walk along the Avenue of Flags in South Dakota’s Black Hills to see four 60-foot faces carved into granite. Many of these visitors do not realize that they are looking at an unfinished project. Gutzon Borglum started his work in 1927 with a much larger vision. His 1925 scale model, which is displayed at Rise Studio, showed the presidents down to their waists, with detailed representations of Washington and Lincoln. The heads were meant to be part of a bigger sculpture.
Borglum also planned to include an inscription called the Entablature. This was intended to be a large panel on the mountain’s eastern side, shaped like the Louisiana Purchase, and would have contained a brief history of the United States. However, this plan was abandoned in 1934 due to funding issues and the difficulties of carving readable text on such a large scale. The funding for the torsos was also cut when Congress required that any remaining money be used to finish the heads.
Borglum dedicated the last 14 years of his life to this project. He passed away in March 1941, and his son Lincoln took over. However, work stopped that October, leaving Mount Rushmore permanently unfinished. The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota people, and the United States had promised this land to the Sioux in the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. The government later took back the Black Hills after gold was discovered there. The faces on Mount Rushmore represent presidents who presided over this expansion, carved into land taken from the original inhabitants.
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Source: Upworthy, by Adam Albright-Hanna