Mount Rushmore National Monument, Black Hills, S.D.

NiNaWavs2U
NiNaWavs2U
96 هزار بار بازدید - 12 سال پیش - Although Mount Rushmore stands today
Although Mount Rushmore stands today as a shrine of democracy, a National Monument and memorial to this country's birth, growth, and ideals, the original idea behind the carving was to promote tourism to the Black Hills area of South Dakota.  Today, Mount Rushmore symbolizes the greatness of this nation through the greatness of its leaders.

Carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota and sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore features 60-foot sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. These presidents were selected by Borglum because of their role in preserving the Republic and expanding its territory.

The image of Thomas Jefferson was originally intended to appear in the area at Washington's right, but after the work there was begun, the rock was found to be fragile and unsuitable, so the work on the Jefferson figure was dynamited, and a new figure was sculpted to Washington's left.

From October 4, 1927 to October 31, 1941, John Gutzon Borglum and some 400 workers erected the sculpture under dangerous conditions, removing a total of 450,000 tons of rock in order to create the enormous carved heads, each of which reached a height of 60 feet.  Borglum left his work on the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial project near Atlanta after artistic disagreements with the sponsors of that project.

The initial concept called for each president to be depicted from head to waist, lack of funding forced construction to end in late October 1941.

The Washington head was formally dedicated in 1930, followed by Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937 and Roosevelt in 1939. Borglum, a member of the Ku Klux Klan died in March 1941.  The final dedication was not held until 50 years later. John Gutzon Borglum supervised the completion of the heads. Carving stopped in October 1941, on the eve of our entry into World War II.

The U.S. National Park Service took control of the memorial in 1933, while it was still under construction, and has managed the memorial to the present day. It attracts nearly three million people annually.
   
The project cost a total of $989,992.32.  The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres and is 5,725 feet above sea level.

Sculpted on land given to Native Americans by treaty, Mount Rushmore is one of the most inflammatory and blasphemous symbols of what was taken from them.  For this reason, they have contracted the carving of an enormous Monument to Chief Crazy Horse on a mountain not far from Rushmore.  That carving is incomplete.

Fun facts about The faces on Mt. Rushmore:
*Creation of the Shrine of Democracy took 14 years and cost a mere $1 million.
*Rushmore's granite faces tower 5,725 feet above sea level.
*The carvings on Mount Rushmore are scaled to men who would stand 465 feet tall.
*Each head on Mt. Rushmore is as tall as a six-story building.  
*More than 800 million pounds of stone were removed from Mount Rushmore while carving the presidents.
*Each president's face is as tall as the entire Great Sphinx of Egypt, measuring 60 feet from the chin to the top of the head.
*The presidents' noses are 20 feet long, each mouth 18 feet wide and the eyes are 11 feet across.
*The workers had to climb 506 steps daily to get to the top of Mount Rushmore.  

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Be well
Nina
12 سال پیش در تاریخ 1391/10/25 منتشر شده است.
96,055 بـار بازدید شده
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