After visiting the Crazy Horse Memorial the day before, Mount Rushmore felt small-ish…
Mount Rushmore National Memorial was created with the intent of being a tourist attraction to the Black Hills area. It honors four presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
The information in the visitor center is very interesting, because design changes were done three times during its construction.
1- After workers began carving Jefferson next to Washington’s right shoulder, they discovered that the granite was insufficiently stable, so the partially formed face was blasted off the mountain and started over on the opposite side of Washington.
2- Rooselevelt’s head had to be slightly rotated because of a crack that was discovered that would have compromised the integrity of his nose
3- Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist. However, the rock proved to be less reliable than at first thought due to a high mica content, which is not suitable for sculpting. So plans were curtailed to what we see now – heads only.
The bottom line, which has to do with geology alone, is that the Park states that no further presidents will ever be added to the monument
Nerdy note: I usually use the abreviations NP (National Park) and NM (National Monument), but in this case I got tricked, because this NM is a National Memorial…