Chapter THIRTY-ONE: Carving the Mountain

Some sons of God must stand upon the mountaintops
And there through all the deathless generations guard
The continents, and guide the gracious stars of fate:
So God made mountains for the throne of these.
Upon this mountaintop America enshrines
Her sturdy sires, exalts her noblest knight.
Where children of the earth may lift appraising eye
And feel his virtue while his strength invests their souls.
--DOANE ROBINSON

Gutzon Borglum carved a mountain. And as the years went by he became a dynamiter, a geologist, a practical miner and, very definitely, an engineer. He got used to crawling about on the face of a cliff, and in time he used to say that his sculpture was not greatly different from the cutting of a large block of stone in a studio. But, of course, the stone of the mountainside wasn’t dressed or prepared. It couldn’t be shifted into the light or away from it. The amount of stone to be removed was prodigious, and injury of the material left for carving was always a serious possibility. How one of these projects ever got itself done is something that he wasted thousands of words trying to explain.

When Gutzon first used dynamite for carving on Stone Mountain it had been taken by the world as a fantastic idea. But there was no coyness about its use when it came to Rushmore. It was laid out there in all proportions and all quantities. The sculptor had experts who knew what could be done with a six-inch stick, or half an ounce of it, or with a percussion cap alone. And they had to be in touch not only with the drilling of the moment but with the design of the whole monument to avoid the chance of an overcharge at one point injuring stone at a distance.

Such drilling skill was developed that the sculptor could depend on them to block out a nose to within an inch of the finished surface, to shape the lips, grade the contours of the neck, cheek, brow and all round areas. He could even shape the eyeball as a whole, but the defining of the eyelids and the pupils was done by drills, air tools and by hand.

The sculptor’s first concern was the position of Washington. He put in days studying the surfaces, shadows, reflections and the course of the sun; and eventually he chose the place where Washington’s head rises today. It was the best spot on the mountain.

He began to make models to suit the cliff. He discussed the angle of the head with Carothers, one of the literary secretaries of the Hoover administration, and he had long conferences about the character of the first President with Hoover himself. They decided that _uprightness_ should be emphasized in Washington’s statue. The head should not incline to right nor left, nor forward nor back, but should be set on the shoulders so that it would show dignity and poise. Carothers drew a straight line down the middle of a paper, put a ball on the top of it to indicate the head and remarked quite gravely, “This is the way it should be drawn.”

And that is the way it was drawn. The center of Washington’s head was fixed at the point where the horizontal line going across the brows met the vertical line through the chin. In roughing off they had to remove fifteen feet of rock before they found a hard, undamaged surface. This was done late in the summer of 1927. Blasting was not resumed until 1929.

Work on Washington taught them how to proceed quickly with other figures. It established methods, determined tools, temper of steel, arrangement of scaffolding for hoists and a labor gauge on the men who were to perform most of the rough toil on the monument.

The first preparation for carving was to draw in its proper position on the mountain an oval of the required length and width. This oval was divided into three sections--one at the line of the eyebrows, one at the end of the nose and a third at the end of the chin. These measurements were in the scale of the model; in other words, a model sixty inches in height had an enlarged outline sixty feet in height.

The work on Rushmore was done from swing harnesses developed at Stone Mountain. They were made of a leather-covered steel frame and were quite strong. The men were buckled into them. Thereafter they might be bumped or fall, but they could not get out without unbuckling themselves. The swings were suspended at the end of a 300-foot steel cable from a winch on the top of the cliff. They were housed in a shack on Washington’s head.

Ordinarily the practical method would have been to determine precisely where in the cliff the head was to be located, then fix the model at the same angle; next, to begin at the top, peel off the rough stone and finish as you went down. That’s the way any good mechanic or engineer would carry on such work, relieving the features, finishing as he descended and using the stone shelf that the work always left under his feet to stand on.

But this was a work of art, not of mechanics. The revelation of the face by the sculptor was as if he were releasing a living thing. Each drill hole must pierce the stone with certainty, so as not in any way to injure what was below. Gutzon said he could not allow mechanical methods to reduce his art production to a lifeless form.

Each day they carefully surveyed the rough-blocked face. When they reached the chin line they were thirty feet in from the original granite cliff. There they stopped and built a scaffold from chin to forehead, and the sculptor sent to Texas for his old friend and assistant Hugo Villa. It was then June and an unveiling was scheduled for July.

No man on the Rushmore project had ever carved a mountain before. But no matter. He had less difficulty with them than with any other phase of the undertaking. Most of them were the so-called forgotten men of Keystone--veteran miners, the one-time workers of the idle Holy Terror Gold Mine. They were hard-rock men; they were used to explosives; and they did not need many instructions.

In the end the sculptor had several experts on the mountain as adept as any in the country, and a loyal group of helpers. Gutzon established a boardinghouse near the blacksmith shop, engine room and other buildings at the foot of the cliff, and frequently came with his guests to eat with them. He knew them all.

Gutzon’s original contract with the Mount Harney Memorial Association had specified that Captain Jesse Tucker of Stone Mountain be named superintendent of the work at Rushmore and given a fixed salary of $10,000. To make this sum possible the sculptor reduced the amount to be paid to himself. The reason for Tucker’s position, he frankly stated, was that he must give part of his time to other sculptural work, and that while he was absent from Rushmore he needed someone to take his place.

But presently the Rushmore Commission hadn’t any money to pay to anybody. There were arguments and misunderstandings, and Tucker resigned. After that the full burden of the work fell on Gutzon. He moved with his family to the Black Hills and built a studio some distance from Rushmore at Hermosa.

Gutzon probably missed Tucker more than anybody else with whom he had ever worked. Correspondence between them during the first few months of construction on Rushmore shows the great concern of both of them for the safety of the workers. Tucker, who thought the men careless, was certain that they would contrive some bad end for themselves. But the years went on and the carving got done and somehow there were no serious accidents.

The nearest approach to disaster came when a lightning flash exploded a percussion cap just as the worker was making an artificial electrical connection. The man in the swing harness was shot out into space but by instantaneous muscular reaction flexed his knees as he was hurled back against the side of the mountain. He was badly bruised but not otherwise hurt. The sun was shining when the accident happened. Thereafter no blasts were set off without the advice of the weatherman.

The other accident occurred when a steel wire controlling the hoist broke. The open box in which three or four men were riding came hurtling down. The quick wit of a young man from Stamford, the assistant superintendent, prevented a serious crash. He stuck an iron rod between the hoist wheel and the cable that retarded the descent of the car. Only one worker jumped out as the car hit. He was treated for a minor chest injury.

Some unknown friend whom Gutzon always identified privately as Sam Insull set out a Diesel engine for him at a town in the western part of the state. For two years it furnished all the power needed not only to run the air compressors and drills on the mountain but the pumps of the Holy Terror Mine as well. A Wyoming company was started and Gutzon, on the promise of electricity for less than his own plant would furnish it, agreed to shut down. Shortly before the day scheduled for the unveiling of the Washington head the power company informed him that he must sign a contract to use the company’s electricity for twenty years or be cut off. Gutzon snorted and turned to the Diesel engine. But there was no hope from that source. Somebody had dismantled it and carried away most of the movable parts.

Commissioner John Boland rushed out from Rapid City and thereafter Gutzon bought power from the new company. But he refused to sign the twenty-year contract. The cost of the power was a matter of bitter discussion forever after.

Lincoln came to the mountain in 1932 and worked two years without pay. Gutzon trained him to do the “pointing,” which consists of measuring the models and locating their enlargements on the rock. It is the direct translation of the work of the artist from studio to the material which he will cut, and Lincoln was carefully prepared.

Gutzon declared that Lincoln was a master of this work, understanding its complicated mathematics, and father had confidence in son. Under him a staff of three assistants served as a “pointing crew” for the measurement of all models to be enlarged on the mountain. When not measuring they acted as aids and guides to the drillers. The instructions given to Lincoln at one period when the sculptor’s arrival at Rushmore was delayed indicate the dramatic quality of the work. The sculptor instructed his son thus:

I want you, in beginning the work and allotting the positions to
the men, to avoid the two finished faces completely. Do not touch
the hairlines around the face of Washington or his chin, or under
his chin. Do not approach the face lines of Jefferson, or to the
side of his face or under his chin.

On Photograph No. 1, I have drawn a circle where you can locate
Payne [a driller] to begin down-drilling under what will be
Washington’s ear and the left-hand lapel of his coat. Put one or
two men on the lapel, which I have marked No. 2. Put two men on
Washington’s shoulders and work carefully from the top, which I
have marked No. 3. That will dispose of five or six men.

I have marked Lincoln’s eye. You can put two men in cages in each
of the eyes. I would use Anderson on the one side and Bianco on the
other, putting Bianco where the feldspar streaks run down, and
Anderson on the outside. I would give Payne, with Bianco, a
position on the nose and have them begin to take off stone by
drilling in squares and breaking it off down to within six or seven
inches of the finished surface. But do not try to cut the eyelid or
eyeball. Make a round mass for each of these. Lincoln’s face in
that way will take up probably six more men.

You can put about three men on the Roosevelt stone, marking
carefully the contour of Lincoln’s face so that none of that is
disturbed, and going back into the hole next to Jefferson’s face as
deep as you can. If you can put any men down on the block that I
have marked No. 8, without any danger of tools and stone falling on
them, all right. I would put about three men down on the big crag.
We still have seventy or eighty feet to take off that. I think this
will keep you busy until I get there.

It did.