GutzonBorglumOnline

I was born in St. Charles, Idaho on March 25, 1867, and at the age of seven moved to Nebraska. My father was a Danish Latter-Day Saint who practiced plural marriage in backwater Idaho. I spent time in Paris, training under the watchful eye of Aguste Rodin.

I carved big things my whole life. My sculpture of Abe Lincoln’s head can be found in the Capitol Rotunda and was carved from six tons of granite. In 1908, I won a contest to carve a statue of General Philip Sheridan in Chicago.

In 1915, the Daughters of the Confederacy hired me to carve a 70-foot statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee into the site of Stone Mountain, Georgia, a project financed by the Ku Klux Klan. It didn’t take me long to realize that Lee would look like a postage stamp on the side of Stone Mountain and so I convinced them to include Jefferson Davis, and ‘Stonewall’ Jackson riding around the mountain, followed by a legion of artillery troops.
After a delay caused by World War I, I began work on this unprecedented monument. After finishing the detailed model of the carving, I was unable to trace my ideas onto the massive area onto which I was working, until I developed a gigantic magic lantern to project the image onto the side of the mountain. I was so damn clever back then.

Carving officially began on June 23, 1923 Lee’s head was unveiled on Lee’s birthday January 19, 1924. It was magnificent, but I started bickering with the old bags in the DAC soon thereafter (although I never had much trouble with the fellas in the KKK). Eventually, I gave up on the project, smashed my model, and left. My work was cleared and Augustus Lukeman completed a similar project.

The good news is that the sculpting bug had bit me and I was anxious to try another large-scale piece. That’s how I ended up in South Dakota.

Doane Robinson came up with the idea for Mount Rushmore and initially suggested that it include Washington and Lincoln. But because the monument sat in the center of lands that we, how shall I say, acquired from the Indians, we decided to include Jefferson, too. Afterall, Jefferson was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase and for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and without him, we wouldn’t own the hills. Some say that Teddy Roosevelt was added as an acknowledgement of Manifest Destiny, but to be honest, I thought we needed another face up there and knew that if we put up a monument to T.R., it would really tick off North Dakota.

Much of the work at Mount Rushmore was overseen by my son Lincoln while I was traveling the country raising funds for Mount Rushmore. Lincoln finished the season after I died in Chicago in 1941 after complications from surgery. Lincoln cleaned up the work a little, but left it the way I did, which is to say, “marvelous”.

I am buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale in the Memorial Court of Honor. My dear wife, Mary Montgomery Williams Borglum, is interred alongside me.

After 41 years of silence, there are a few things I want the world to know:

1.) Stop naming every crappy tourism store in the Black Hills “Rushmore this” or “Rushmore that”. This is one of the greatest monuments in the world, a modern wonder. If what you sell can’t stand on its own merits, then you ought not be in business.

2.) I’m not too pleased about Mt. Rushmore sharing the new state quarter with a pheasant. The pheasant is an import from China and Rushmore is American-made.

3.) Pick up your garbage when you leave the monument, dammit.

4.) I never intended for the Black Hills to be a sculpture garden and I don’t like the giant concrete dinosaurs scattered about the region. But I am a fan of Crazy Horse monument and think every effort should be made to get it finished. I spent far too many years running around the countryside with hat in hand looking for the money necessary to finish Mount Rushmore. It’s sad that not once but twice in the last century, someone didn’t step forward and finance a great piece of public art. I should have accepted Coolidge’s offer to give me the full $500,000 for the monument — Sen. Norbeck was furious when I didn’t — but I was also afraid of being indebted to others.

5.) I just loved North by Northwest.

6.) No matter what anybody tells you, follow my lead and marry the first time for sex and the second time for love.

7.) Nebraska is a great place to be from.

8.) I always wondered why the name Gutzon didn’t become a crazy among new parents the way that Britney and Phoenix did.

9.) I wouldn’t do well in this politcally correct society where you subsist today. I never really thought women and men should be on equal ground. That’s why I had so much trouble with the broads in the Daughters of the Confederacy and why I was livid when someone in Congress proposed, in 1937, that Susan B. Anthony’s face be added to the monument. We had already struggled with the four president and weren’t close to being done and all of a sudden they wanted another face? Luckily, some quick thinking lawmakers added a rider to the bill requiring that any additional faces be financed privately. Show me the money! Ha. It will be another 20 years before women make as much money as men, you think they could have afforded Susan B. on Mount Rushmore back then.

10.) I always kind of liked the name, “Mt. Harney”.

A busy week at Mt. Rushmore. We always see a fair number of tourists this time of year, but on Tuesday, we also had the pleasure of hosting three impressive gentlemen from the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. They were here for libations as part of their visit to tbe Ellsworth Air Force Base.

Naturally, I’ll always think of it as the Rapid City Army Air Base because that’s what it was originally called. And I have a hard time getting used to those slick B-1 Bombers. The Rapid City Army Air Base was home to B-17s a year after history books will tell you that I expired in 1941. Sonuvabitches who flew those B-17s used to love to fly close to Mt. Rushmore while my son and his crew were finishing the work I started. They thought it was great sport, but it put my men in danger.

People might be surprised to see that I have a blog. I am a big fan of the internet because I think it finally allows a man the resources he needs to create the kind of art work that he finds fulfilling. For the last year, my creative energy has been devoted to writing. I wore myself out turning a mountain into a national treasure. Now, it feels good to just sit behind a keyboard and pontificate.