What do you think?
Rate this book
The Carving of Mount Rushmore
The first book to tell the complete story of Rushmore. "I had seen the photographs and the drawings of this great work. And yet, until about ten minutes ago I had no conception of its magnitude, its permanent beauty and its importance." ―Franklin Delano Roosevelt, upon first viewing Mount Rushmore, August 30, 1936 Now in paperback, The Carving of Mount Rushmore tells the complete story of the largest and certainly the most spectacular sculpture in existence. More than 60 black-and-white photographs offer unique views of this gargantuan effort, and author Rex Alan Smith―a man born and raised within sight of Rushmore―recounts with the sensitivity of a native son the ongoing struggles of sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his workers.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
12 people are currently reading
121 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
May 7, 2024
This is the book that is recommended if you go to the Mount Rushmore gift shop. This book is also where Bill Bryson pulled from for One Summer America 1927.
If you have read Bryson’s book, you have probably laughed at how they lured President Coolidge to South Dakota and kept him by filling the ponds with fish and him thinking he must be the best fisherman in the world.
If you have visited Mount Rushmore, you have heard Gutzon Borglum’s incredible and impossible dream to sculpt four life size presidents as well as all the important US Historical documents into rock.
Even then, you will still love this book. Rushmore is surely one of those ideas that seem so big that there is almost no way it could succeed and yet it has.
Borglum sounds like a Hollywood character almost. Someone who was extremely talented and yet his visions bigger than reality. And as you know in reality, things cost money and only fools would offer an open checkbook.
I am not sure Smith wrote more than a couple of books but this one is a masterpiece and I doubt I can describe it on detail to sell it.
Rushmore is an almost impossible dream and Borglum is only the most colorful character in a decades long drama where nature is an enemy and time and money are enemies. But the stories of the masterful workers and the back and forth with the US and South Dakota governments are compelling.
Borglum sculpted Stone Mountain and as this story tells part of that tale (along with the Ziolkowski family plan to memorialize Crazy Horse) shows how difficult this project could have been.
Yet of course we know the ending, it succeeds if maybe not in total imagined form. The story ends with Borglum’s death and the start of World War 2 closing the book with the tourist attraction it is today.
I cannot recommend this enough to history and non fiction fans, even if it doesn’t sound like a subject you might have much interest in, it’s a fascinating tale.
January 25, 2020
This book was recommended reading by Road Scholar Educational Travel for a trip to South Dakota, including Mount Rushmore. If only I had read it before we went! -- I would have appreciated all the obstacles, hard work, planning, and genius of Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor, (whose name I never knew before reading this!). Beautifully written, with actual pictures of the work in progress, this is a masterpiece not to be missed, which takes you from the very inkling of an idea through to the completed project and which makes you realize how close it came to never coming to fruition oh so many times.
June 30, 2024
This is a fascinating account of the carving of Mount Rushmore, and also the exorbitant life of its creator, Gutzon Borglum. I enjoyed every chapter, and the author held my interest from first to last page.
Borglum was a genius sculptor but frequently was also a petulant pain in the you know what.
I never realized how close the project came to failure due to its constant money flow problems. Appropriations from Congress over many years allowed for the work to continue when it seemed as though all was lost.
Borglum envisioned carving more than just the heads of the four presidents. He wanted to carve parts of the torsos of the presidents as well. And he also wanted to make a Hall of Records, an everlasting tomb of sorts, that would hold for eternity precious American documents and provide a history of the United States. While the Hall of Records was initially chiseled on the back of Mount Rushmore, it was never completed due to a lack of funding. Once WW2 broke out, American efforts and money went to winning the war rather than finishing a monument to democracy in remote South Dakota.
While Borglum inspired the idea, it was the many hardened and tough workers who actually carved the masterpiece of Rushmore with dynamite and drill bits in jack-hammers, all while hanging on the side of a mountain in a saddle sling. Nothing had ever been done like the four heads on Rushmore, and nothing like it has been created since.
Borglum believed America was a great nation set apart from all others. He idolized Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln for their unique accomplishments to establish and preserve the American nation. The monument is Borglum’s loving tribute to America.
Borglum did not live to see the monument finished, but he lives on in his magnificent monument to our American democratic republic. Borglum’s son, Lincoln, finished the monument the same year his father died (1941). It has blessed generations of Americans since and has become a popular summer vacation destination site for millions of Americans. Over two million visitors frequent the park each year!
To visit and gaze upon the magnificent creation of Gutzon Borglum evokes a sense of wonder when one considers just how immense, majestic, and absolutely perfect the monument is. It continues to inspire and evoke strong patriotic feelings for Americans of all races, creeds, and colors. It is truly an astounding work of art!
Borglum was a genius sculptor but frequently was also a petulant pain in the you know what.
I never realized how close the project came to failure due to its constant money flow problems. Appropriations from Congress over many years allowed for the work to continue when it seemed as though all was lost.
Borglum envisioned carving more than just the heads of the four presidents. He wanted to carve parts of the torsos of the presidents as well. And he also wanted to make a Hall of Records, an everlasting tomb of sorts, that would hold for eternity precious American documents and provide a history of the United States. While the Hall of Records was initially chiseled on the back of Mount Rushmore, it was never completed due to a lack of funding. Once WW2 broke out, American efforts and money went to winning the war rather than finishing a monument to democracy in remote South Dakota.
While Borglum inspired the idea, it was the many hardened and tough workers who actually carved the masterpiece of Rushmore with dynamite and drill bits in jack-hammers, all while hanging on the side of a mountain in a saddle sling. Nothing had ever been done like the four heads on Rushmore, and nothing like it has been created since.
Borglum believed America was a great nation set apart from all others. He idolized Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln for their unique accomplishments to establish and preserve the American nation. The monument is Borglum’s loving tribute to America.
Borglum did not live to see the monument finished, but he lives on in his magnificent monument to our American democratic republic. Borglum’s son, Lincoln, finished the monument the same year his father died (1941). It has blessed generations of Americans since and has become a popular summer vacation destination site for millions of Americans. Over two million visitors frequent the park each year!
To visit and gaze upon the magnificent creation of Gutzon Borglum evokes a sense of wonder when one considers just how immense, majestic, and absolutely perfect the monument is. It continues to inspire and evoke strong patriotic feelings for Americans of all races, creeds, and colors. It is truly an astounding work of art!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 26, 2025
This book is nothing like you'd expect. We brought it along on a journey from Connecticut to South Dakota, reading it aloud along the way to ensure we would have a clue what we were looking at when we finally reached Mount Rushmore. It proved to be a roaringly good account not just of how the project got going and who did it, but of all the money and politics that played a role. It's a stunning look at a bull-headed artist and the things he had to do to press forward in the face of stupid or greedy politicians, the Great Depression and all sorts of obstacles that by all rights should have ground the whole thing to a halt a dozen times. But in the end, there it is, an achievement for the ages that in some ways is utterly ludicrous and in others, just magnificent. Rex Alan Smith's book is, without doubt, the one you want to grab to bone up on the whole damn saga. It's funny. It's intelligent. It's insightful. It's just great.
March 27, 2010
I really enjoyed this book and all that I learned about Mount Rushmore. The book gives background on the selection of the site, why it was decided to carve a monument, how the people were chosen and about the actual process itself. This could sound kind of dry, but is actually interesting because it is wound around the characters who were part of the process and reads much like a historical fiction, except is is factual. I especially enjoyed learning about all the political overtones in getting the monument funded and how complicated the process was. It really is a miracle that it was ever completed with all the other things going on at the time. I wanted to read the book in preparation for going to see the monument and was very glad that I did. Now I just need to get to South Dakota before I forget what I learned!
May 26, 2023
Say the words “Mount Rushmore” and the visage of George Washington and the other presidents leap instantly into mind. The sculpture is the true meaning of the word iconic and not the overused way the word is now. You can even see the heads pictures of Rushmore before the carving began. Eight hundred million pounds of stone were removed during the carving, and the faces are so large from brow to chin that each is as tall as the entire Great Sphinx of Egypt. Ordinary men of the same proportions would stand shoulder-even with a forty-story building and could wade the Mississippi River without dampening their knees. Rex Alan Smith’s book tells the story of how this monument came to be through the four men he considers its fathers: sculptor Gutzon Borglum, scholar Doane Robinson, US Senator Peter Norbek, and US Congressman William Williamson.
Doane Robinson was the State Historian of South Dakota in 1923 and was the first to dream of Mount Rushmore. For some time he had been trying to think of new ways to lure tourists to South Dakota. It had some of the nation’s finest scenery in The Black Hills, which was already attracting a large number of visitors. However, he felt that tourists soon get fed up on scenery unless it has something of special interest to be an additional draw. Around this time, he read newspaper stories of the carving of Stone Mountain in Georgia and thought that The Needles, an area of great freestanding fingers of granite in the Black Hills, could be carved into important Western figures such as Lewis and Clark, Red Cloud, and Sacagawea.
Robinson reached out to Lorado Taft (the leading sculptor of the day) and Daniel Chester French (who carved the Lincoln Memorial) who both declined. He then contacted Gutzon Borglum, the man responsible for Stone Mountain, who leapt at the idea. On a visit to South Dakota in late 1923, it was Borglum’s idea to carve Washington and Lincoln as they would be a larger draw to a national audience and have the monument serve as a billboard for American History. Eventually, the idea of carving the Needles was abandoned and Mount Rushmore, a cliff unknown to even those who lived nearby, was picked.
Then came the decision of who to carve. Washington and Lincoln were shoo-ins. They would be big draws for both money to fund the project and tourists to see the monument. Washington was the Union’s most prominent founder, and Lincoln its foremost preserver. It is unknown how Jefferson’s name came up, but all thought it was an excellent idea as Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and made the Louisiana Purchase (of which the Black Hills were a part), doubling the nation’s size. The truth is, Theodore Roosevelt was included because Borglum and Norbek were both ardent fans of TR and campaigned for him in 1912. The justification for Roosevelt’s inclusion was because Roosevelt built the Panama Canal, thus “completed the dream of Columbus, opened the way to the East, joined the waters of the great East and West seas.”
The real carving of Mount Rushmore began on October 4, 1927. But how exactly does one carve a mountain? If a sculptor makes a mistake or uncovers a flaw in his medium, he can throw it away and start again. But you can’t throw out a spoiled mountain. At Stone Mountain, Borglum had a special machine built that enlarged a slide and projected it on the side of the mountain. That wouldn’t work at Rushmore because its face was too lumpy for accurate projection (think projecting a picture onto the side of a sack of potatoes) and the Rushmore figures were in-the-round not bas relief. Borglum came up with a system where a given point on either the model or the mountain could be precisely located in terms of horizontal distance, vertical distance, and angle from a fixed master point – the master point being the center of the top of the figure’s head. Borglum build his models on a scale of one to twelve so that one inch on the model was one foot on the mountain. On both the model and the mountain, he built pointing machines consisting of a protractor (to measure degrees of right and left from the centerline) and a horizontal swing line. This system proved so simple and effective that it would be the only measuring system used throughout Rushmore’s construction.
On October 31, 1941, the tools fell silent at Mount Rushmore. Some of Borglum’s ideas were never realized, but what was accomplished was a Herculean feat. What is astonishing is that throughout the twelve year construction, there were only a small number of major injuries and zero fatalities.
The book contains many details of the engineering feats achieved and the ways Borglum solved the problem that many sculptures have of the subject’s eyes being lifeless. A good chunk of the book is dedicated to the political and financial struggles to get the project completed. Sometimes it felt like too much on this end and not enough on the carving end, but it has enough detail on both sides to evoke wonder at the physical feat and willpower necessary to carve a mountain.
Doane Robinson was the State Historian of South Dakota in 1923 and was the first to dream of Mount Rushmore. For some time he had been trying to think of new ways to lure tourists to South Dakota. It had some of the nation’s finest scenery in The Black Hills, which was already attracting a large number of visitors. However, he felt that tourists soon get fed up on scenery unless it has something of special interest to be an additional draw. Around this time, he read newspaper stories of the carving of Stone Mountain in Georgia and thought that The Needles, an area of great freestanding fingers of granite in the Black Hills, could be carved into important Western figures such as Lewis and Clark, Red Cloud, and Sacagawea.
Robinson reached out to Lorado Taft (the leading sculptor of the day) and Daniel Chester French (who carved the Lincoln Memorial) who both declined. He then contacted Gutzon Borglum, the man responsible for Stone Mountain, who leapt at the idea. On a visit to South Dakota in late 1923, it was Borglum’s idea to carve Washington and Lincoln as they would be a larger draw to a national audience and have the monument serve as a billboard for American History. Eventually, the idea of carving the Needles was abandoned and Mount Rushmore, a cliff unknown to even those who lived nearby, was picked.
Then came the decision of who to carve. Washington and Lincoln were shoo-ins. They would be big draws for both money to fund the project and tourists to see the monument. Washington was the Union’s most prominent founder, and Lincoln its foremost preserver. It is unknown how Jefferson’s name came up, but all thought it was an excellent idea as Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and made the Louisiana Purchase (of which the Black Hills were a part), doubling the nation’s size. The truth is, Theodore Roosevelt was included because Borglum and Norbek were both ardent fans of TR and campaigned for him in 1912. The justification for Roosevelt’s inclusion was because Roosevelt built the Panama Canal, thus “completed the dream of Columbus, opened the way to the East, joined the waters of the great East and West seas.”
The real carving of Mount Rushmore began on October 4, 1927. But how exactly does one carve a mountain? If a sculptor makes a mistake or uncovers a flaw in his medium, he can throw it away and start again. But you can’t throw out a spoiled mountain. At Stone Mountain, Borglum had a special machine built that enlarged a slide and projected it on the side of the mountain. That wouldn’t work at Rushmore because its face was too lumpy for accurate projection (think projecting a picture onto the side of a sack of potatoes) and the Rushmore figures were in-the-round not bas relief. Borglum came up with a system where a given point on either the model or the mountain could be precisely located in terms of horizontal distance, vertical distance, and angle from a fixed master point – the master point being the center of the top of the figure’s head. Borglum build his models on a scale of one to twelve so that one inch on the model was one foot on the mountain. On both the model and the mountain, he built pointing machines consisting of a protractor (to measure degrees of right and left from the centerline) and a horizontal swing line. This system proved so simple and effective that it would be the only measuring system used throughout Rushmore’s construction.
On October 31, 1941, the tools fell silent at Mount Rushmore. Some of Borglum’s ideas were never realized, but what was accomplished was a Herculean feat. What is astonishing is that throughout the twelve year construction, there were only a small number of major injuries and zero fatalities.
The book contains many details of the engineering feats achieved and the ways Borglum solved the problem that many sculptures have of the subject’s eyes being lifeless. A good chunk of the book is dedicated to the political and financial struggles to get the project completed. Sometimes it felt like too much on this end and not enough on the carving end, but it has enough detail on both sides to evoke wonder at the physical feat and willpower necessary to carve a mountain.
July 21, 2019
This is a detailed and interesting history of the carving of Mount Rushmore, from the initial idea to the completion. It includes information about the sculptor, Guzman Borglum and the South Dakota politicians who shepherded the project from birth to completion. The book is provides a good overview of South Dakota and its history as well as the United States at the time Mt. Rushmore was created. I appreciated the detailed discussion of the artist's background and the history of the state of South Dakota. I read this in preparation for a trip to Mt. Rushmore coming up in a few weeks--I had to return the book to the library before I finished but am happy I got it back before the beginning of the trip. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of Mt. Rushmore
May 19, 2019
Because of an upcoming trip to the Black Hills, I was inspired to read the story of Mount Rushmore's development and carving. I came away with a very thoroughly researched, account of the project from idea to finished product. This book is more than just a review- it is a detailed history of the cast of characters who made Rushmore possible from the man whose vision guided the project, the sculptor, the commissioners, the lawmakers who fought for funding, the pointers, the miners, and the many others who brought the landmark into fruition. This book may not be for everyone, but knowledge of this story will definitely enhance my experience when visiting the site.
January 1, 2021
I found this to be a superb work and very moving.
The author's skill and tremendous labor on the project is evident, and his affection for Rushmore story is almost as obvious as the miraculousness of the carving itself.
It's both refreshing and awing, in this age when it's more fashionable to scorn our national ethos than revere it, to read of so many strong characters being so united in their patriotism as to overcome their personality differences for the doing of a great deed that may span the ages better and longer than any other feat that has been built.
The author's skill and tremendous labor on the project is evident, and his affection for Rushmore story is almost as obvious as the miraculousness of the carving itself.
It's both refreshing and awing, in this age when it's more fashionable to scorn our national ethos than revere it, to read of so many strong characters being so united in their patriotism as to overcome their personality differences for the doing of a great deed that may span the ages better and longer than any other feat that has been built.
January 31, 2018
Interesting book. However, it focuses more on the politics and finances of the project than on the project itself, which I would enjoy knowing more about.
December 13, 2018
The book to read for a visit to the Black Hills.
June 21, 2019
Became tedious near the end. Skimmed last 100 pages. Still a good reminder of visiting Rushmore as a child and as an adult.
May 19, 2020
Could have used an epilogue.
July 13, 2021
A great deal about the sculpter, Gutzon Borglum, his career and the struggle to get support for the project. Not as much about the actual building process as I expected. Glad I read it.
May 24, 2025
Read this right after visiting Mt. Rushmore. Excellent book with wonderful details.
February 28, 2017
Excellent account of the people responsible for creating Mount Rushmore. Reads like a novel, with endearing characters and a great glimpse into the historical times that made this monument
possible.
possible.
August 31, 2016
I am so glad I was able to read this book before our family visits Mount Rushmore this summer. It was so interesting to learn of how this came to pass. I am very excited to see it in person. The sculptor was a very arrogant man who didn't like being told what to do or having limits financially or otherwise on his endeavors. He was horrible at budgeting and spent money like crazy. He didn't think he should have to pay for movies, groceries or anything in town because all his work would do for the town. I think people in modern day would give him anything and everything he wants, because it has made the tourism industry there thrive. This book covered more of the personalities and financial setbacks than the actual physical work of the monument.
A few interesting things I learned: Thomas Jefferson was originally started to the left of Washington by another sculptor and blasted down. The figures were originally designed to be more close together and Roosevelt wasn't included. There was a brief campaign to have Susan B. Anthony on there. The original design was to have a stone tablet recording the history of the U.S. and a "Hall of Records" for the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The workers had to climb 500 steps each day up to the work site. Borglum (the sculptor) passed away one week after being told he would get no more funding from the government for the project. The government was focusing all of their finances on WWII. 5 weeks after Borglum died, Pearl Harbor was bombed. His son finished as much as he could. The original design was supposed to have the figures carved down to the waist, but time and money made it only possible for the heads. In the 14 years of the work there was only one minor injury of a broken leg. That is remarkable for such a dangerous job.
I enjoyed this book a lot, but it wasn't a page turner. It was strictly informational, but very well researched.
A few interesting things I learned: Thomas Jefferson was originally started to the left of Washington by another sculptor and blasted down. The figures were originally designed to be more close together and Roosevelt wasn't included. There was a brief campaign to have Susan B. Anthony on there. The original design was to have a stone tablet recording the history of the U.S. and a "Hall of Records" for the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The workers had to climb 500 steps each day up to the work site. Borglum (the sculptor) passed away one week after being told he would get no more funding from the government for the project. The government was focusing all of their finances on WWII. 5 weeks after Borglum died, Pearl Harbor was bombed. His son finished as much as he could. The original design was supposed to have the figures carved down to the waist, but time and money made it only possible for the heads. In the 14 years of the work there was only one minor injury of a broken leg. That is remarkable for such a dangerous job.
I enjoyed this book a lot, but it wasn't a page turner. It was strictly informational, but very well researched.
August 13, 2016
A very interesting read. The book, for the most part, had good pacing, and the more prominent characters were well researched. I did find that the author tend to write each crisis that faced the Mt Rushmore project as a pinnacle crisis---they were out of money, Borglum's mortgage payment was overdue, commissioners butting heads with Borglum--it grew rather repetitive. This wouldn't have been a problem if Smith had presented it as another hurtle as opposed to, "oh no, will they ever finish it?".
By the end of the book I was really fed up with Borglum. Smith kept insisting that everyone liked him, thought he was a great artist, but he just sounded like a real pain in the posterior. For this reason the last few chapters were painful-- I disliked him so thoroughly.
I loved reading this and learning the history of Mt Rushmore, irritating sculptor not withstanding. One day I'll make it!
By the end of the book I was really fed up with Borglum. Smith kept insisting that everyone liked him, thought he was a great artist, but he just sounded like a real pain in the posterior. For this reason the last few chapters were painful-- I disliked him so thoroughly.
I loved reading this and learning the history of Mt Rushmore, irritating sculptor not withstanding. One day I'll make it!
November 1, 2012
I purchased this book in the giftshop at Mt. Rushmore. The author does a great job of telling the story of how Mt. Rushmore came to be. There were so many points in time that this project could have ended. Borglum and those that served on the Mt. Rushmore commission would be amazed by what this monument has become for all Americans. It is truly awe inspiring. Mt. Rushmore is unfinished. The plan was to include their bodies. It is clear to all now that it is finished and is an amazing testament to American exceptionalism.
November 29, 2009
I read this book just before my trip to Mt. Rushmore in 2008. It really helped my understand what an enormous project the carving of Mt. Rushmore was. Since I was born in SD (but moved to CA when I was 2), I find information about this area extremely interesting. During the depression my dad, as an unemployed teenager, worked with the CCC when Mt. Rushmore was being carved.
December 26, 2011
Interesting book about the carving of Mount Rushmore, and the people who made it happen. Read like a good fiction story, except it really happened. I also liked how the author backed up his story with correspondences, etc. between the people involved. And, when he wasn't sure he told us so instead of "assuming" what someone was thinking.
August 22, 2007
awesome.
November 30, 2007
Just got back from South Dakota, so probably that is why I am enjoying the book. After seeing the mountain and the countryside, it is a well written book about the time the mountain was being carved
September 3, 2016
Great book about the carving of Rushmore. Lots of detail. Gutzon Borglum was a genius sculptor. The carving of Rushmore was an amazing feat.
Read
July 8, 2016A Roads Scholar trip prompted me to read this book before viewing Mt. Rushmore. An excellent istorical account of the difficulties carving this monument.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews