_Mount Rushmore_ NATIONAL MEMORIAL A MONUMENT COMMEMORATING THE CONCEPTION, PRESERVATION, AND GROWTH OF THE GREAT AMERICAN REPUBLIC [Illustration: Location practically in the Center of the North American Continent] PUBLISHED BY THE Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills 1948 [Illustration: GUTZON BORGLUM] CONTENTS Foreword 1 The Mighty Works of Borglum 5 From the Beginning 9 The Role of the National Park Service 16 Wind Cave National Park 17 Badlands National Monument 17 Jewel Cave National Monument 17 Devils Tower National Monument 17 The Antiquity of Mount Rushmore 18 The Hall of Records and Great Stairway 20 George Washington 22 Thomas Jefferson 24 Abraham Lincoln 26 Theodore Roosevelt 28 As Great Men Saw It 30 Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills 31 _FOREWORD_ _A monument’s dimensions should be determined by the importance to civilization of the events commemorated. We are not here trying to carve an epic, portray a moonlight scene, or write a sonnet; neither are we dealing with mystery or tragedy, but rather the constructive and the dramatic moments or crises in our amazing history. We are cool-headedly, clear-mindedly setting down a few crucial, epochal facts regarding the accomplishments of the Old World radicals who shook the shackles of oppression from their light feet and fled despotism to people a continent: who built an empire and rewrote the philosophy of freedom and compelled the world to accept its wiser, happier forms of government._ _We believe the dimensions of national heartbeats are greater than village impulses, greater than city demands, greater than state dreams or ambitions. Therefore, we believe a nation’s memorial should, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, have a serenity, a nobility, a power that reflects the gods who inspired them and suggests the gods they have become._ _As for sculptured mountains—_