Who decided which presidents would appear carved in stone on Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota?
First of all, they weren’t supposed to be presidents.
In 1923, the South Dakota’s tourism board got the idea to carve western heroes into the mountain — Kit Carson, Jim Bridger and John Colter. People you never heard of.
It would attract the tourists.
The tourism people went to a famous sculptor at the time — John Borglum. He had just accepted a job to carve Robert E. Lee on the side of Georgia’s Stone Mountain.
Borglum said no to Western heroes. He didn’t like them, but he suggested four presidents.
“Father of the Nation” George Washington, “The Expansionist president,” Thomas Jefferson, “Preserver of the Union” Abraham Lincoln, and “Protector of the Working Man” Theodore Roosevelt.
Borglum wanted to carve them from the waist up, but budget problems and fault lines in the mountain’s granite forced him to scale back the project.
Even so, it took 14 years to carve, and Borglum’s son had to finish it. Borglum died a few months before the project was completed.
