Gutzon Borglum

The bronze reads like an epitaph, and it praises Borglum as a statesman who toiled for equality in the rights of man. In the 1920s, carving the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, he grew close to the reorganized Ku Klux Klan that helped fund it, and his letters to the Indiana Klan leader D. C. Stephenson argued for Nordic superiority and strict immigration limits. The eulogy also skips Nebraska, where he grew up, and its corruption line points to his 1918 charges against wartime aircraft production. Both faces carry the same text.

What the plaque says

Gutzon Borglum (John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum) Born March 25, 1867 - Died March 6, 1941 His birthplace was Idaho. California first taught him art. Then France, who first gave him fame. England welcomed him. America called him home. His genius for the exquisite as for the colossal gave permanence on canvas, in bronze, in marble, to moods of beauty or passion, to figures of legend and history. Nations, cities, colleges paid him tribute. As a patriot he stripped corruption bare. As a statesman he toiled for equality in the rights of man. At last he carved a mountain for a monument. He made the monument chant: "Remember! These giant souls set America free and kept her free. Hold fast your sacred heritage, Americans! Remember! Remember!" The first actual carving was begun in 1927. The Washington head was dedicated in 1931, representing the founding of our government; the Jefferson in 1936 for the man who made our first great expansion west with the Louisiana Purchase; Lincoln in 1937 for his preservation of the Union; the final head, Roosevelt, in 1939, for the completion of the Panama Canal. Borglum said, "I want somewhere in America a memory of the great things we accomplished as a nation, placed so high it won't pay to pull it down for lesser purposes." The project was nearly completed in 1941 when Borglum died. Mount Rushmore was completed by his son Lincoln with the final drilling done October 31, 1941. Erected 1973 by the S.D. Dept. of Highways, State Historical Society and the Mt. Rushmore Memorial Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Rushmore National Memorial — 0.5 mi
  Four faces blasted out of a sacred mountain by 400 workers in fourteen years, with a Jefferson that had to be dynamited off and a hall of records never finished.
• Black Elk Peak — 4.2 mi
  The highest summit in the Black Hills, renamed in 2016 for an Oglala holy man after carrying, for 150 years, the name of the general who attacked a Sicangu camp in 1855.
• 1880 Train — 7.2 mi
  A steam excursion on a mining branch line that hauled gear for Mount Rushmore, named for a decade it never ran in by a man who wanted steam to survive.
• Needles Highway — 8.2 mi
  Fourteen miles that Governor Peter Norbeck laid out on foot and horseback through the granite spires, threading a tunnel eight feet wide.

More markers nearby

• The Pigtail Bridges — 1.0 mi
• The Father of Mount Rushmore — 1.1 mi
• Mount Rushmore Inspiration — 5.0 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Lodge — 5.1 mi