OCR Text |
Show By LES ANDERSON Mount Rushmore National Monument is situated in the Harney Mountains of the Black Hills 25 miles southwest south-west of Rapid City, S D. The mountain top. about 1,000 feet above sea level, is an oblong block of solid granite 500 feet wide, 300 feet thick and about 1,000 feet long. ONE ONE end of this massive mas-sive granite loaf is the world's largest single work of sculpture. sculp-ture. Gazing into eternity with impassive eyes are the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. This memorial was suggested sug-gested in 1923 by Doane Robinson, the director of the South Dakota Historical Society. It was authorized by Congress in 1925 under President Calvin Coolidge. Manual work on the project was commenced in August of 1927 by Gutzon Borglum, one of America's finest artist engineers. en-gineers. BORGLUM WAS born March 25, 1871 near Bear Lake, Ida. At an early age he went to San Francisco and worked as lithographer and painter. He practiced sculpturing sculp-turing and in 1890 he went to France where he became a close friend of Auguste Rodin who was recognized as the most gifted sculptor in Europe. The statue 'The Thinker1 is Rodin's masterpiece. master-piece. In 1901 Borglum returned to America and settled in New York City. Many of his massive mas-sive works are on display around the country, including the head of Lincoln in the rotunda ro-tunda of the Nation's Capitol Building. He did some work on the Memorial to the Confederate Con-federate Army at Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Ga.. but due to some personal differences that arose he left it to be finished by others. HE DtVtLOPED a method of using controlled explosives for large scale preliminary work in shaping stone. Rushmore is the most extensive ex-tensive ever attempted by anyone. It is difficult to comprehend the dimensions of these huge figures. All 4 are of equal size. It is 60 feet from the tip of the chin to the top of the head. A MAN can stand in the eye. Full body figures of proportionate size would be that of men about 465 feet tall. With normal vision and clear weather the features are recognizable at a distance of 20 miles. The natural appearance of the eye was created by a remarkable approach to the art of achieving optical allusion. The total area of the eye is a hollowed out depression depres-sion in which the inside is al- wavs darkened by shadow. A shaft of stone was left protruding from the center of the depression with the end out where it can catch the light. This area of light in the center of the shadow provides the pupil for the eye. THE SITE was chosen for the durability of the granite rock. If the faces are never subjected to any damage other than the normal erosion from the elements, their features fea-tures will remain distinctive for several centuries. The faces were unveiled one by one beginning with that of Washington which was the finest order rrf , ' THE COST .-as-r I H years for which ha( , lha,-- spent in actual iiDor " ' |