Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his crews worked from 1927-1941 to complete Mount Rushmore, the carving of four presidents — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt — in South Dakota’s famed Black Hills. The blight on the monument is the fact that the Black Hills are sacred to the region’s indigenous Lakota Sioux. The US even signed a treaty in 1868 recognizing the land as the Sioux’s… but then gold was discovered and the government reneged sooner than you could say “speculation!” Anyway, the monument is big, bold, and desecrates a holy site on stolen land: naturally Trump wants his image on it! He squawked about it during the first term, and the conversation reared its hideous head again in January with a sycophantic Florida congresswoman sponsoring a bill to get the wrecking ball rolling. The NY Times just ran a piece that delves into the history of Rushmore, and why this dream of Trump’s (like all his other ideas) is destined to crumble. Some highlights:
The National Park Service on why more faces can’t be added: First, it considers Mount Rushmore to be a completed work of art. Second, there is no room. “The carved portion of Mount Rushmore has been thoroughly excavated, and there are no viable locations left for additional carvings,” the park service said in a statement. Those are the frames for the debate, now and in the future. One is philosophical. The other is geological. One is a question of should; the other is a question of could. … “You wouldn’t add another face to Borglum’s Mount Rushmore just like you wouldn’t add one to da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper,’” said Dan Wenk, who was the superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial from 1985 to 2001. “But I recognize that these types of ideas are no longer off the table.”
Trump wants his face carved: Historians recently ranked him as one of the worst presidents in American history, while the four on Mount Rushmore are all in the top five. But plenty are taking Mr. Trump’s Mount Rushmore ambitions at 60-foot-face value. Theoretically, the president could direct his administration to carve his face there. Given his penchant for chipping away at norms, who’s to say that Mr. Trump wouldn’t figure out a way to chip away at Mount Rushmore? “Fortunately, from my view, and not just for Trump but anybody else,” Mr. Wenk said, “they’re fighting against the reality of the rock.”
The situation is already precarious: Beginning in 1989, scientists assessed the stability of the rock and mapped 144 fractures and other discontinuities on and around the four faces. The intersection of fractures creates blocks, or large chunks, not unlike the pieces of glass in a shattered windshield. In 1998, a network of gauges was strung across Mount Rushmore to monitor the cracks and blocks. The worry is less about seismic activity (unusual in the area) and more about rock movement during freeze-thaw cycles, both seasonally and from night to day. Horizontal cracks are mostly sealed to keep water out, while vertical cracks are left open to let water drain. “One of the concerns about an additional face is that you could activate these fractures,” said Paul Nelson, a geomechanical engineer who spent years overseeing the Rock Block Monitoring System at Mount Rushmore. “If you remove material, you could be removing support.”
Borglum’s granddaughter has a cutting take: She sees Mount Rushmore as a historical memorial more than a political one. Her grandfather, after all, chose four men who were already dead. “It was conceived as a tribute to the ideals of America,” she said, “not to any one man.”
So basically, it’s good news and bad news. The good news: it’s not scientifically feasible to carve any more into the mountain, not even a pair of baby fists. But the bad news is, we’re dealing with a tantrum toddler and his enablers who don’t give a sh-t about science or reality. During Trump’s first term, when Homeland Security Barbie Kristi Noem was still a representative (and shooting her dog), she gave President Manchild a toy model of Rushmore with his face added. Isn’t that enough?! Or at the very least, can’t we just AI generate an image and tell him it’s real? We know he can’t tell the difference! And speaking of, fair warning about the NY Times digital article: some sections are animated, in a way that helps illustrate the geology of the mountain, but it also includes a (fleeting) rendering of Don’s face next to Lincoln. Barf.
I’ve never seen Mount Rushmore in person; my only cultural connections to it are enjoying the tableau as a dramatic backdrop to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and chuckling at the fact that for a portion of her life, Cher thought it was a natural formation. If you had asked me several years ago who, if anyone, I thought should be added, I would’ve said FDR. But ever since learning how important the land is to the Lakota Sioux, I’m completely on team leave it the f–k alone. The mountain has been desecrated enough without Trump.
Photos credit: IMAGO/Zoonar.com/STEVEN WHITE/Avalon, Bill Bachmann/Avalon and Getty
Saw it on a family trip in the summer of 1985, along with the Badlands, Yellowstone, Devil’s Tower. Great history and sightseeing. I remember back then there was an artist who was trying to carve a sculpture of Crazy Horse into a nearby rock face – I don’t recall there being much progress -in 1985 or now but apparently it’s still a carving “work in progress” per the website…
Saw both monuments back in 2021. Each is impressive in their own way. I much prefer the Crazy Horse monument as it honors the indigenous people of the area. I don’t know that it will ever be completed, but it was worth a visit.
And this is why the President should not be allowed to control the National Park System.
Agreed. There has been a fun protest that occured when the Dept of Interior posted signs with QR codes at national parks asking for “areas needing improvement’ or services that need improving. People are overwhelming the survey with creative all-caps negative expletives of what the current president should go and do to himself. If anybody is going to a national park, feel free to join in.
It is a disgrace that it was built in the first place. As a nation we committed deliberate genocide against native peoples. It is an extra layer of insult that presidents faces deface a sacred site and bring tacky magat tourists to the area.
Agree. Never will make an effort to go there or to that ugly Stone Mountain monument. Maybe they can put a Felon 47 taco stand at the base.
I hope they do it. And I hope the whole thing falls apart. Mount Rushmore is bullshit anyway
Yes, that was my thought too. If Trump’s face is added — and the whole thing crumbles, it will be symbolic of what he’s doing to this country, AND it would remove the desecration done to the site.
This idiot…that’s all I got
They’ll probably carve Lincoln’s face into the orange traitor*’s.
Though it would be a funny poetic justice if, in doing so, they instead just obliterated the faces entirely. It wouldn’t solve the injustices done, but perhaps it would be a little less middle finger to the tribes that live there.
*the news of the election potentially being stolen by the GOP is continuing to bubble with more and more people learning about it, including that Dr. Walter Mebane, previously tasked with finding statistical evidence of election interference abroad, concluding that there are “malicious distortions” in the results of the 2024 election.
And that the entire GOP blesses every crappy thing Trump does. There are no good Republicans anymore anywhere.
I remember seeing how Mount Rushmore came to be on the History Channel years ago. SD invited President Coolidge. When he came they deliberately put fish in the lake or river he was fishing in to get him in a good mood, making him think he was such an incredible fisherman. All this to butter him up to grant the funds for SD to create a tourist attraction. So let trump destroy it like he destroys everything he touches and let SD lose all the tourist revenue the got from desecrating the Lakota Sioux’s sacred land.
He’s definitely going to try to wreck it, just like he did the Rose Garden.
Maybe the asshole will have his least favorite president removed so his face can replace it. My guess would be Abraham Lincoln, for the Emancipation Proclamation. And if it’s “geologically unfeasible,” they can just use styrofoam and a glue stick. The MAGAs would all find it so elegant.