Mt. Rushmore isn’t exactly the way I expected
I’m amused by the news that my glorious monument will get a power wash on July 5. As you probably know, building the monument was an arduous task. In fact, just between you and me, I’m sometimes surprised the whole thing hasn’t collapsed under its own weight. This power wash — a high powered stream of watch that will remove dirt and grime and rid the monument of tiny lichen — will ultimately prolong the life of Mount Rushmore. But I hope workers don’t knock off Lincoln’s nose in the process. (Ha ha. Just kidding. I hope.)
I read recently that the little microbes growing on the faces cause the monument to decay at a rate of one inch every 10,000 years. The workers who inspected the monument up-close in April said the father of our country was covered with lichen, fungi, moss and bird droppings.
As much pride as I take in the monument, you mght not know that it isn’t exactly the way I originally envisioned it. Initially, I wanted to include a giant inscription on the side of the mountain outlining the nation’s history. It was to be a message to future generations. I rationalized the idea to others by stating, “You might as well drop a letter in the postal system without an address or signature as to send that carved mountain in to the future without identification.” I wanted to put the entablature in the space where Lincoln’s head is currently located and estimated the writer would have about 500 words to complete the task.
The Europeans howled when this was reported in newspapers over there. “The story of a nation in 500 words?” they said.
But I was committed to the idea and had a plan to make sure it happened. When President Calvin Coolidge traveled to the Black Hills in 1927 for a ceremony that marked the completion of an early stage of the project, I used my time at the podium to ask him to write the entableture and told him that it would be signed in stone with his name at the end.
“Mr. Coolidge!,” I told him, “As the first president who has taken part in this great undertaking, please write the inscription to be carved on that mountain! We want your connection with it shown in some other way than just by your presence! I want the name of Coolidge on that mountain!”
How can a politician turn an offer like that down. Cool Cal might have known that he would probably never get his face on the side of a mountain, but his name was a nice consolation prize. He readily agreed.
An aside: Has anyone considered changing the name of Ellsworth Air Force Base to the George W. Bush Air Force Base? Who knows what might massage the president’s ego?
Anyway, one of Coolidge’s last official acts as president was the signing of Public Law 805 which established a commission. The law read: “The commission is to complete the carving of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, to consist of heroic figures of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, together with an entablature upon which shall be cut a suitable inscription to be indited by Calvin Coolidge.” The bill also provided a quarter million dollars for the project.
But then disaster struck. We discovered that while working that the stone surface where we had planned on placing Jefferson would never support his massive forehead. So we had to move Jefferson to Washington’s left — ha ha, how is that for political irony — and we no long had room for the entableture on the face of the monument.
I didn’t give up on the idea immediately, however. My idea was to write the inscription in English, Latin, and Sanskrit, a language my wife Mary had studied. It would serve as a new Rosetta Stone, aiding future scholars in unraveling the mysteries of our languages and helping to decipher them. I proposed putting the entablature on the backside, so that if faced what is now the Hall of Records.
The president sent me a copy of his first two paragraphs, and I did a little bit of good-natured editing. Then I released the work to the general public and suddenly every booze-filled newspaper editor in the country was a literary critic. They mocked the president to the point where I was forced to step forward and admit that I had done a little bit of tinkering. Coolidge withdrew from the assignment.
A year after the president died, in 1934, I asked newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst to publicize the contest in his chain of journals. He agreed and even said that he would offer cash and scholorhips for prize. Alas, the Rushmore Commission expressed reservations because the law expressly stated the Coolidge must write the text. Helloooooo, he’s dead.
Luckily, the contest was announced in the Hearst papers before the commission could officially act. The commissioners wisely decided to keep the legal issue quiet and deal with the problem if it came up.
Meanwhile, President Franklin Roosevelt accepted Borglum’s invitation to head a judging committee to include Eleanor Roosevelt, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, and other VIPs. The contest was extremely popular (one estimate put the number of entries at 100,000) and Mt. Rushmore was national news.
The judges named winner in several age groups. The college edition winner was William Burkett of Nebraska. His scholarship allowed him to go to college and he later became a successful businessman in California. I was pleased when he later said that he owed his success to the Rushmore Entablature Contest and wished to be buried near the monument.
When I received the bundle of winning entries by post, I was horrified and rejected them all. I decided that if you want to get something done, you have to do it yourself and began working on the text myself. But when World War II broke out, Congress was in no mood to provide me with the additional funds necessary to carve the entablature and so the idea was shelved.
