Carving Mount Rushmore

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum began chiseling the rockface of Mount Rushmore on 4th October, 1927 - the start of a 14 year project to carve Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Roosevelt into the South Dakotan summit. A team of up to 400 workers used dynamite, jackhammers, and chisels to shape the mountain into the iconic presidential faces, and to access the summit, built a staircase and ropes for support, working at dizzying heights of 500 feet above the ground. Remarkably, despite the dangers, not a single fatality occurred during the construction. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explain how Borglum hotfooted it to the project from a even more controversial one in Georgia; unpick the Lakota Sioux people’s legal disputes with the U.S. government over the land rights; and reveal why George Washington's nose was even larger-than-life than the rest of him…  Further Reading: • ‘Sculptor Gutzon Borglum - Mount Rushmore National Memorial’ (U.S. National Park Service, 2023): https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/gutzon-borglum.htm • ‘The Making of Mount Rushmore’ (Smithsonian Magazine, 2011): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-making-of-mount-rushmore-121886182/ • ‘The dark history of Mount Rushmore - Ned Blackhawk and Jeffrey D. Means’ (Ted-Ed, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX4IvoP1HTk Love the show? Join 🌴CLUB RETROSPECTORS 🌴 to DITCH THE ADS and get an additional full-length episode every SUNDAY! Plus, get weekly bonus bits, unlock over 70 bits of extra content and support our independent podcast. Join now via Apple Podcasts or Patreon. Thanks! We'll be back tomorrow! Follow us wherever you get your podcasts: podfollow.com/Retrospectors The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill. Theme Music: Pass The Peas. Announcer: Bob Ravelli. Graphic Design: Terry Saunders. Edit Producer: Sophie King. Copyright: Rethink Audio / Olly Mann 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices