The last time I was at Mount Rushmore, I wouldn’t have known where I was if it weren’t for the faces on the wall of stone. The place was full of people going in and out of the gift shop as larger than life stone eyes watched every movement. Some tourists walked by with ice cream cones in their hands. Others stood along the wall gazing up at the mountain while children peeked through viewfinders to get a closer look at the faces.
It certainly wasn’t like the first time I saw it. I was actually a bit disappointed that my grandchildren would never see it like I did as a child. I traveled back in time to my first trip to Mount Rushmore. That’s the year I rode in the back window for a good part of the long trip from Georgia. I remember seeing the stone faces in the distance growing bigger as we drove up the winding road. We pulled off the side of the road and stopped at a picnic area. Mama made sandwiches and we had lunch under the watchful eyes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. A narrow trail led to a closer view. I was fascinated that someone was able to chisel away the stone to make recognizable faces with eyes that seemed to be looking at us. When we drove up to the observation deck, there was no grand entrance like there is today nor were there distractions to divert our attention from the amazing massive work of art that rose out of the earth.
In 1963 there were 1,272,800 visitors to Mt. Rushmore. In 2018 there were 2.31 million.
The sculptor of the faces of Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, had a grand scheme to carve a room in which to store documents of our country’s heritage. His plan did not come to fruition wholly but there is a repository of records placed in the hall entry of the “secret room” behind Abe Lincoln. Etched on the capstone is the following quote of Borglum, “…let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.”