The Boys

Locals call Mt Rushmore "the boys." Going to see this national monument is quite surreal. You see so many pictures of it that it's hard to believe you are looking at the real thing.
The first glimpse comes on the winding road leading up to the heads. Locals say this is packed for the fireworks celebration near the 4th of July. During the final night of our stay, we stayed in a great B & B where you could see the Boys in the distance.

As you can tell, it was a cloudy day when we visited. The following day the summer program and nightly lighting ceremony began, and we went back to see it. Ironically, the heads were in full view until the lighting. By that time, clouds had covered the top entirely and you couldn't see a thing. I also was surprised at the vast number of foreign tourists. I mean, this corner of South Dakota isn't really close to any big airports or coasts. It's a long trip.

This is the Avenue of Flags. See which one is right at the front? Purely by luck.

We went through the Ranger talks around "the boys." The most suprising thing I learned was that there wasn't a special committee or survey or whatever to choose the figures carved. Instead, the artist chose them because he wanted to. That would never happen today. Washington = foundation, Jefferson = expansion, Lincoln = preservation, and Roosevelt = development. Gutzon Borglum sculpted Jefferson first and didn't like him, so he just re-blasted it all and started over. There's a small sculpture Borglum made first as a model. One inch of the model equalled one foot of mountain. No one died in the carving, which happened mostly in the 30s. Pretty impressive.

Remember the ridiculous movie I mentioned before, "Naitonal Treasure 2"? There is some truth to a hidden room behind the monument. Borglum equated his sculpture to the great Pyramids or the Sphynx with the idea that we people today have only a small idea of Egyptian ideals or even identity. In thousands of years, people may not know who these heads are or what America stood for. So, he wanted to have a Hall of Records behind the heads which would include inscriptions of our important documents--the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc. Congress had already poured alot of money into this project, and by 1941 Congress had something a bit more important to fund. So, work came to a halt, the Hall of Records was abandoned, and the heads were left unfinished. Borglum originally had a full bust of each president planned.

It's something you should see if you ever have the chance. From my experience out here, guys seem much more excited about this than women do. Maybe it's a size issue.