Mount Rushmore

Today we had to drive a long way (from Hill City, SD to Huron, SD) and rehearse and play a concert, and we lost an hour (Mountain Time to Central Time), and we really wanted to see Mount Rushmore. So the Claremont Trio did an unusual thing... we got up early.

Last night we asked the hotel clerk what time Rushmore opened. "Well, you can see it any time. They don't put a sheet over it." Hmmm... but we wanted the full national monument experience, so we showed up 4 minutes after the gates officially opened and had the place completely to ourselves.
Mount Rushmore National Monument



Mount Rushmore is awesome. So vivid, especially in the early morning light, but also very natural, the way it grows out of the cliff. I've been loving our up-close-and-personal tour of the US, so I was happy to start the day off with some patriotic goose bumps.

We chatted up the gift shop attendant and heard some crazy stories about Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor himself, and the others who worked on the monument, many of whom hiked 4 miles up to the work site each day with 60 pounds of equipment! Apparently the drills they used in the initial stages of carving were so powerful that special techniques had to be devised in order for people to operate them without being thrown off the cliff by the kick-back.



Some people like to debate about who would be the most appropriate addition to the statue of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. A ranger assured us that such speculation is purely hypothetical. There is not enough useable granite to carve another face, even if anybody could agree on whose it should be.

Great as it is, Rushmore is not without its tacky commercial side...