NPR's Book of the Day After 100 years of Mount Rushmore, its biographer says the landmark is incomplete
Feb 16, 2026
Matthew Davis, author of A Biography of a Mountain and historian of Mount Rushmore. He traces the monument's origin as a tourism project, how Gutzon Borglum reframed it around four presidents, and why the carving remained physically and politically incomplete. The conversation also covers funding struggles, labor challenges, and the contested sacred land of the Black Hills.
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Tourism As The Origin
- Mount Rushmore began as an economic idea to boost South Dakota tourism after WWI.
- Doan Robinson proposed carving regional Western figures to attract car travelers to the Black Hills.
Borglum Recast The Purpose
- Sculptor Gutzon Borglum reframed the project as a monument to American empire and exceptionalism.
- He selected four presidents to symbolize different aspects of that national narrative.
A Long, Seasonal Carving
- The carving took from 1927 to 1941 because funding, seasonal work, and manual techniques slowed progress.
- Borglum relied on faith and iterative on-site decisions without modern scanning or environmental reports.
