Introduction
Mount
Rushmore is located in the Black Hills of South
Dakota. The memorial was sculpted by 400
workers who were led by Gutzon Borglum and later by
his son Lincoln Borglum. The Black Hills had a perfect
location that had a massive granite wall which, was
prime to sculpt out of since granite is dense and
coarse. The granite wall was big enough to carve 60ft
faces of president George Washington, Calvin Coolidge,
Thomas Jerfferson, and Abraham Lincoln (built in the
same order from first to last.) The sculpting began in
1927 and stopped during 1941, in which the fine
details were never completed. During the process over
450,000 tons of granite were removed. 90% of the
sculpting was done by dynamite (800 pounds of rock
were removed at one time) and the rest were done by
hand tools. This was no easy task. The workers had to
travel up over 500 steps to begin work. The job was
completed after $11 billion of today's price
conversion were used up.
(After)
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