Mount Rushmore National Memorial is situated in the Black Hills of Pennington County, South Dakota, USA and is probably the most famous sculpture in the world, not surprising as it was after all carved out of an entire mountainside.

It features 4 former presidents of the USA, from left to right the sculptures depict:

They were chosen because from 1732 to 1882 they represent the first 150 years of the history and liberty of the United States.

Mr. Gutzon Borglum was the Belgian sculptor who along with some 400 workers created the masterpiece.  It took over 14 years to build, from October 4th 1927 until completion on October 31st 1941.  The total cost was just under 1 million dollars at $989,992 and ¢35. A lot of money in 1941.  I wonder what the 35 cents was for?

Gutzon Borglum

To straighten out a common myth, there were actually no deaths of any of the workers whilst they were creating the sculptor, there were however some serious accidents from falls, but all survived to tell their grandchildren about it.

Over 2 million visitors from all over the world visit this monument every year and it is one of the most photographed locations on Earth, it could almost be deemed as one of the wonders of the world.

The faces that make up the magnificent sculpture were carved out of granite which is the mountains base element.  It has been mathematically calculated that the monuments are suffering from weather erosion, but before we all panic, the erosion is at a very slow and hardly noticeable rate of 1 inch of surface granite lost every 10,000 years, so in 50,000 years time there will be a significant change to how they look today, but by that time we might all have colonized the planet Mars, so its not worth worrying about.

The mountain itself was named after a Mr. Charles E. Rushmore who was an Attorney from New York city USA who in 1885 was out on expedition in the area.

The sculptures of the 4 presidents were originally intended to be waist high and not just  the busts that we see today, the reason why they were never finished as intended was because Gutzon Borglum ran out of money !  We can however get an impression of what it would have looked like by the scale model that Borglum created to work from.

Borglum's scale plaster of paris model

In the close up picture below we can see the coat lapels on the sculpture of George Washington that were marked out by the sculptors ready to detail but it was probably at that point when the money ran out, so sadly, they where never completed.

 The finished busts of the 4 presidents are still something to behold though, as each one is over 60 feet tall and the sculpting of their faces was done to the finest detail.  It is a shame that Borglum did  run out of money, as much more detail was initially intended and would therefore have been much better.

There was a quite a lot of rubble created by all the sculpting of the figures and it was originally intended to be cleared up, but due to the collapse of their finances this mound of rubble  that is the size of a small mountain itself, still remains there today.  In the photo below, by the way the light is reflecting off Abraham Lincoln's sculpted out eyes, its as if he is looking down at all the rubble with a slight frown !

Getting right under Thomas Jefferson's nose !  The monuments preservation is being tendered to by a private cleaning company that has the contract to clean away algae, moss and other organic matter that could eventually damage the granites smoothed surface.  Damage over the course of time would be made by acidic and alkali  bio-corrosion along with cracks made by the roots off the moss.

It takes a whole team of restorers about 3 solid weeks to clean all of the presidents sculptured faces.  The cleaning is done via high pressure very hot water jets, no chemicals of any kind are used as any cleaning agents could irreversibly damage the monument.  

Top scientists have considered that high pressure hot water jet cleansing is the best solution as it delays the organic matters re-growth on the granite and does not harm the sculptures.  The cleaning process will probably need to be carried out every few years and this way the whole monument will be in great shape for future generations to marvel at.

The Mount Rushmore monument is a truly magnificence achievement and it boldly illustrates the ingenuity and innovation of man.