The Carving of Mount Rushmore

by Rex Alan Smith

61. Borglum in the tramway cage. The chain above his head is attached to the brake arm, which broke on the day the cage ran away and crashed. They were probably within about two hundred feet of the top of the mountain when the loosening set-screw finally let go. Instantly the cage began racing back toward the hoist house, eleven hundred feet behind and almost four hundred feet below. “Hit the brake!” yelled Peterson. Someone pulled the chain controlling the brake handle. The cage slowed, then stopped. Next, they released the brake slightly, and the cage began casing slowly downward. Then the brake started smoking. Its metal shoes grasped the cable with a pinching action, and the resulting friction was causing them to overheat. Kept engaged enough to make the cage move slowly and safely, the brake shoes would become red hot and soft and would fail. The only alternative seemed to be to apply the brake intermittently and try thus to come down in a series of spurts

and jerks. With mechanic Howdy Peterson watching the brake and calling instructions they did just that, and traveled nervously but safely … for about eight hundred feet. As Peterson recounted it later: 62. Some of the structures on the clifftop. At left center is the A-frame and platform that were wiped away on the day the A-frame collapsed. We’d go along and I’d say, “Hit it again!” and they’d hit it and stop the cage and

we’d let the brake cool. Then we’d do it again, and we were coming down all right. Then Schramm—a big fella, weighed about two-twenty-five—he pulled the chain so hard the brake-arm broke. And, Boy! Rrrooommm! Down we went! Foreman Matt Riley happened to be at the hoist house at the time, and with great presence of mind he levered a piece of two-by-four against the spinning cable drum and slowed it somewhat. Otherwise the accident probably would have been fatal. As it was, the cage struck, smashed, and flung its passengers willy-nilly onto the loading platform. Valdez seemed to be unhurt. Schramm was temporarily unconscious. Peterson was bruised and lacerated and so was Johnson. Happy Anderson was missing...

to be quite sure how he got there. Some say that just before the crash he jumped, hoping to land on the roof of the compressor house. Others say he was thrown out of the cage when it struck. But even though the event may have been confused, its result was not. Anderson had a fractured arm and several broken ribs. All who had been in the accident were sent by Lincoln to Rapid City, where they were hospitalized for observation. Five were sent, but through a mix-up six were hospitalized. Glen Jones, who had helped take the men to town, explained (or has been quoted as having explained), “By God! Those nurses took one look at me and threw me in a room and put me to bed, and I wasn’t even in the damn thing when it wrecked!” But, as Howdy Peterson commented later, “O1’ Glen was quite a card. He was a real ...

ended the most serious accident in all fourteen years of Rushmore’s construction. The days of summer flowed past and then it was fall, and with fall came money from the new appropriation, making it possible again to continue carving throughout the winter. It was a presidential election year, and Franklin Roosevelt, winning fifty-five percent of the popular vote, was returned to office. Much to Borglum’s dismay, however, South Dakota returned to her traditional loyalties and gave fifty-eight percent of her vote to Roosevelt’s opponent, Wendell Willkie. There was war talk in the air that fall, and the talk was growing. A Selective Service act was passed, and in...

Mary went with him this time, and on the way they stopped in Chicago, where Borglum was to deliver a speech. While there, he consulted a doctor friend about some prostate trouble he had been having. The doctor recommended surgery. The surgery was performed on February 17. Three days later, while on her way to the hospital, Mary slipped on a patch of ice and broke her wrist. Nonetheless, arm in a cast, she continued to stay beside Gutzon at the hospital, where both he and the doctor thought he was recovering nicely. Actually, however, he was not. Surgery in the pelvic area is especially likely to produce blood clots, and in Borglum’s case it had. Now, undetected and dangerous, the clots were wandering about in his system. He still appeared to be doing very well on the last day of February, when Russell Arundel dropped in with a crushing piece of news. President Roosevelt had announced he was cutting non-defense spending to the bone, Arundel said, and would approve no more money for such projects as Rushmore. The Shrine of Democracy must now give way to the Arsenal of Democracy. Two days later one of the blood clots lodged, and Borglum suffered, but survived, a pulmonary embolism. Mary sent for Lincoln at Rushmore and Mary Ellis in Nevada, both of whom arrived within forty-eight hours. Early on the morning of March 6 another blood clot lodged and produced an embolism that even the indomitable Borglum could not withstand. A few minutes later, a week to the day after he had le...

On the following Sunday, at just before eleven o’clock in the morning, the men of Rushmore assembled outside Keystone’s white-steepled Congregational church at the foot of Mount Aetna. In Sunday-best suits usually a little too tight in the shoulders, hair slicked down and smelling of Brilliantine, faces sun-browned and weathered above white shirt collars, moving with sober restraint and therefore with the self-conscious awkwardness of men whose usual movements are sweeping and unrestrained, they formed into a column. Then, preceded by an honor guard of Keystone Boy Scouts and with Alton “Hoot” Leech standing inside the door and calling their names from a roll, they marched into the church to pay their final homage to Gutzon Borglum.

While hymns were being sung by the Keystone Choir, the men who together with Gutzon Borglum had built Rushmore sat gravely and somewhat uncomfortably in the crowded, hard-bottomed pews, and remembered… … The Chief hadn’t been easy to work for. Demanding, impatient, quick-tempered, sometimes harshly unforgiving. But then, maybe it took a guy like that to handle this hard-nosed bunch. A soft, easygoing man couldn’t have done it, that was for sure. But

the Chief had been able to, and had managed to win their loyalty while he was at it.… … He was a fighter. Man, was he ever. Not afraid of anybody or anything. He’d have tackled hell with a garden hose if he’d had a reason to, and you just had to respect somebody like that.… … And a talker—he could have talked a dog off a meat wagon. Ziolkowski had said one time, “That man could sell you the Brooklyn Bridge and then make you glad you’d bought it.” If he hadn’t been able to do that—to talk all kinds of people into all kinds of things—the Rushmore job probably would have died a long time ago.… … He was a moody cuss. When he was up you couldn’t do anything wrong, and when he was down you couldn’t do anything right, and you never knew which way it was going to be.… … But the big thing was, down under all that impatience and temper and moodiness Borglum was as big-hearted and generous as anybody you’d want to meet. New men didn’t see that at first and were likely

to think he was a real sonavabitch. But the longer they were here the more they realized he was just the opposite.… … He had cared about the crew, that was the thing. Really cared. He never was chummy with ’em. He was stand-offish and kept his place like an officer in the army. But he looked out for his men.… He was a nut about their safety. For instance, he was always running his hands over the sling-seat cables, feeling for a barb that meant a broken strand. One barb and out that cable went. Said he wasn’t going to have one of his men hurt if he could help it, and except for Happy Anderson in that freak cage accident, in all the Rushmore years none had been.… … He’d bawl you out until you just wanted to stomp him, then if he thought you needed it he’d give you the shirt off his back.…...

… Borglum was a crackerjack of a sculptor, all you had to do was to look at Rushmore to know that.… But more important, he was a crackerjack of a man. Like the old-timers used to say, he was somebody you could ride the river with.… The choir had finished, and now Badger Clark, nationally recognized poet and poet laureate of South Dakota, was giving the eulogy: … he did not die, this artist, engineer and dreamer. He will live longer than the monument he created...

Gutzon Borglum was gone and that could not be changed, so now it was time to try to pick up the pieces and figure out what to do next. The opinion of most editors and commentators and of the general public was that the pieces could not be picked up, and that the Rushmore work should be shut down now and forever. Rushmore’s workmen disagreed, and immediately

following their memorial service for Borglum they all signed a petition that read: We, the men who have worked under Gutzon Borglum on Mount Rushmore in past years do hereby and hereon unanimously petition the Mount Rushmore Memorial Commission to permit Lincoln Borglum, his son, to take full charge and complete the work as to his father’s wishes. Mary Borglum disagreed also, and wrote to Congressman Case, “Of course the thing dearest to [Gutzon’s] heart was Rushmore and the wish that Lincoln should carry on.…” And William Williamson disagreed, and told the press: “To accomplish such a project requires a man of exceptional qualifications.… I am of the opinion that Lincoln Borglum is better qualified to complete the project than any other man.”

The Rushmore Commission, as it turned out, was of the same opinion. Meeting in Washington, D.C....

Williamson to prepare a sculptor’s contract for Lincoln. Williamson complied so promptly that he had the contract drafted before the day was over, and on the following morning it was approved and signed. At the same time the commission submitted to the Park Service a new budget calling for an appropriation of $250,000, but this was just wishful thinking and a waste of time. Even before Borglum’s death there would have been no chance of getting such a thing approved, and now there was absolutely none. In fact, the Department of the Interior did not even pass it on to the Bureau of the Budget. Instead, the department asked for, and in due time the Park Service received, only enough money to maintain the monument for viewing by the public. Consequently, what the commission now had to work with, and all it would ever have...

his plans: “The sculpture work on the faces was completed before Father’s death, and the features of the four presidents will not be touched. We’ve got to finish the hair on Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln and do some work on Lincoln’s collar and on his head. That’s the immediate program.” Actually, Lincoln had somewhat understated his task. The features of Roosevelt did require additional finishing, and there remained, as well, some necessary work on Washington’s collar and lapels. That was what he had to do, and he had only $50,000 to do it with. He was but twenty-nine years old and not yet known as a sculptor—only as a sculptor’s son. Now, as the new head of the Rushmore work he would be in the national spotlight, and any evidence of immaturity or ineptitude would be promptly noted and publicized. It was a sobering challenge, and...

On the mountain the job was going very well indeed. Lincoln Borglum was performing superbly—doing with skill all that had been expected of him, and more. The men, too, were performing superbly but their mood was different now. On the mountain, as in the nation, there was an underlying restlessness. They could see handwriting on the wall and they needed no Daniel to tell them its meaning. It said the days of the job were numbered and soon layoffs would begin, and the crew would dwindle and then be gone. And this was the sobering thing—a dark knowledge from which grew a mixed crop of emotions and long silent thoughts.

Lincoln Borglum was saying that with their faces fully finished the portraits of the presidents would be as effective and majestic as if they had been carved to the waist as originally planned.

But the Hall of Records—that ought to be finished, and now that Rushmore had a water system it could be done by wet-drilling and thus without all that killing dust. Located almost exactly halfway between the nation’s coasts, carved in the heart of a bombproof mountain where earthquakes were unknown, and in a dry climate as well, the Hall would be, as Borglum had said, a perfect storage place for records and artifacts of American history and for the preservation of such national treasurers as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Yes, both in spite of the war and because of it, the Hall ought to be finished. But it would not be finished, and that was disturbing.

Then summer was gone and it was October, and the aspens turned yellow in the canyons and the nights grew cold, and Rushmore’s rooftops glistened with morning frost. Most of the remaining jobs had been done and most of the remaining money had been spent, and layoffs were begun and the crew commenced melting away. On October 31, the mountain for the last time echoed the chatter of bumpers and the clamor of drills. Then, at four o’clock on that day it was returned to the timeless silence from which Gutzon Borglum so many years before had roused it. And at that moment the great faces carved upon it appeared just as they do today, and as they will appear to generations yet unborn.

At almost the exact hour that the carving of Rushmore was ended, the war that had ended it drew its first American blood. For, on the night of October 31, 1941, out in the North Atlantic a German submarine torpedoed the American destroyer Reuben James, and the James went down still carrying two-thirds of her 145-man crew. Five weeks later

the war again was to claim American blood, and far more of it—at Pearl Harbor. Thus, the time of creating a Shrine of Democracy was brought to an end, and the time of fighting to preserve democracy was begun. How long our present American democracy may yet endure, or even if it can endure, no one can say. But however long it does e...