Saturday, June 25, 2011

Mt. Rushmore National Monument

After spending a stormy but very pleasant night in the Badlands, we packed up early and headed to Mt. Rushmore National Monument, about 125 miles away. It was a leisure and beautiful drive. Along the way we spotted a fair amount of game, including; 50-60 turkey, deer, pronghorn sheep, buffalo, the mother of all tortoises (honest, this guy was huge), red tailed hawk, a variety of birds, prairie dogs, and for course, cows & horses.
Mt. Rushmore was most impressive. This was the first visit for Meriam and I. As the literatures commented, viewing these huge carved faces of four of our Presidents created a profound sense of awe and pride in us!
The sculptor Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers labored over 14 years (between 1927 and 1941 – the height of the Depression) to carve the faces of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson from the solid rock of Mt. Rushmore. Mt. Rushmore is still the world’s largest monument.
Special tools, measuring devices and other equipment had to be invented by Mr. Borglum in order to create the lifelike perspectives. In fact, he invented a method of carving eyes to give them a lifelike effect. Until his process, all statues either had blank eyes or they appeared lifeless. Inspect the photos below to see if you can identify how he did it.
To get a sense of their size, consider the forehead to chin of Washington spans a distance of 60 feet, the width of an eye is 11 feet, the length of his nose is 20 feet and the width of his mouth is 18 feet. If one were to create the body of Washington in proportion to his head, he would stand 465 feet tall!
Over 90% of the actually “carving” was done with dynamite. The workers used more than ½ million pounds of the explosive!
Oh, and by the way, did I mention the high today was 67 and last night it was in the mid 50’s?

Below is a “Flash” slideshow of a few of our Mt. Rushmore pictures. Note the black and white photograph. This was what the “finished” carving was supposed to look like.
P.S. In the event you can not view this slideshow, you will need to load Adobe’s Flash program (fee) from their website at www.adobe.com.