By MARSHA MERCER
Like most Americans, I’ve seen Mount Rushmore all my life
-- in photos but not in person.
If I had a bucket list, Mount Rushmore wouldn’t have
been on it.
I love the noble monuments to Washington, Jefferson
and Lincoln in Washington, but 60-foot tall presidential heads on a mountain in
South Dakota? Why?
This month I found out.
“You are
going to Mount Rushmore,” friends said, before we left for a fly-drive around
the Dakotas.
But passing through Keystone, S.D., closest town to
the site, I had doubts. Keystone is a kitschy little tourist trap with Old West-ish
décor and entertainment, T-shirts and trinkets.
Would Mount Rushmore National Memorial itself be a crass,
commercial disaster?
Would making the trip to the presidents be like
fighting crowds at the Louvre to glimpse the Mona Lisa – only to have the unbidden
thought: “It’s small”?
President Donald Trump, who beat Hillary Clinton by 30
points in South Dakota, says his dream is to be on Mount Rushmore. Would we see
swarms of Trumpians in red MAGA hats, scheming where to add his face?
No, no and no. Mount Rushmore literally rises above.
It did not disappoint.
As often happens when traveling, I learned by going my
preconceptions were wrong. And, for the record, there’s no room to add another
face.
The monument is huge, majestic and serene in its stark
beauty. It’s not tacky; thank you, National Park Service. Souvenirs are only in
the gift shop, and some were actually made in the USA.
The carved granite faces of George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln have noses 20 feet long, eyes
11 feet wide and mouths 18 feet wide.
Mount Rushmore in the Ponderosa pines of the Black
Hills is remote. You have to want to go there, and last year about 2.4 million
people did. That’s more than twice as many as
visit Shenandoah National Park annually.
Like most of America history, though, the Mount
Rushmore story is complicated.
Start with the name. Charles Rushmore was a New York
City lawyer who came to the Black Hills in 1885 to inspect mining claims. The
story goes that he asked a local guide what the mountain was called and the man
replied, “Never had a name but from now on we’ll call it Rushmore.”
In fact, the Lakota people called the mountain the Six
Grandfathers. They still believe the Black Hills sacred and the monument desecration.
South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson had the vision
in 1923 of colossal figures carved on peaks. He thought people would drive
their new cars to see carvings of heroes of the American West.
But sculptor Gutzon Borglum had a grander plan. Borglum,
son of Mormon Danish immigrants, was talented, flamboyant and temperamental. He
had started work on the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s dream of honoring
Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain, Ga., where he may have joined the Ku Klux
Klan.
He fell out with the daughters and quit in a huff,
freeing him for the Rushmore project.
Mount Rushmore should honor American heroes, Borglum
said, and chose the four presidents.
Exhibits at the Lincoln Borglum Visitor Center under
the Grand View Terrace explain 90 percent of the carving was done with
dynamite, the rest with jackhammer and by hand. From 1927 to 1941, about 400
men worked on the project – and not one died during the construction.
Workers climbed 700 stairs to punch a time clock. They
sat in “bosun chairs” dangling by 3/8-inch steel cords hundreds of feet up and
chipped away rock to reveal the famous faces. They earned $8 a day.
On a sunny July afternoon, throngs of tourists were
respectful and quiet, patriotic and apolitical.
It was refreshing after the toxic atmosphere in the
nation’s capital to see people of all ages and races, from all over the country
and the world, snapping selfies and admiring the labor of many to honor our
democracy’s heroes.
I know now why I wasn’t impressed with Mount Rushmore
before. Photos can’t capture its spirit. This memorial you need to experience
in person.
©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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