13. Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

There exists an age-old question ~ When is a mountain not a mountain? ~  The answer is when it is four United States Presidents.  Join Jackie and Jon on their cozy excursion up and down the face of Mt. Rushmore in Keystone, South Dakota.  They will discuss baseball, fiber optic cable, and blowing up Thomas Jefferson. Get cozy and enjoy.

Jackie Reilly: Host
Jon Schaller: Host
Charles: Producer
Email: cozynookexplorers@gmail.com

Community Shoutout:
Black Hills Playhouse

Mentioned in this episode:
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Hall Of Records
Zen Habits

** 1 Disneyland = 500 acres ** 

Transcript

Jackie: Hey! Jackie and Jon here! 

Jon: We wanted to reach out before beginning this episode on Mount Rushmore to be sure to clarify a few things. 

Jackie: So, we recorded this episode way back in June because we recently moved and are currently in quarantine!  More on that in the coming episodes!

Jon: We do our best to make it clear in this episode that Mount Rushmore has a complex history and that there are some awful aspects to that history.  We believe learning about those terrible things is the first step towards preventing them in the future. 

Jackie: We have been aiming to create a podcast that is less timely and more timeless, but we do want to say that the whole cozy nook explorers team supports mask wearing in public spaces and at public gatherings to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.  It is the kind thing to do and we are huge fans of kindness.

Jon: We hope that you are staying safe and doing everything you can to help to keep your community safe!

Jackie: Alrighty- I think that’s it. Onto the show! 

INTRO

JACKIE: I’m Jackie 

JON: And I’m Jon 

JACKIE: And we are the cozy nook explorers!

JON: Welcome to our show where we explore the world from our cozy nook here in New Jersey using the power of the internet!

Jackie: Yes and it’s Wednesday which means it’s time for another exploration! This week we are going to MOUNT RUSHMORE in SOUTH DAKOTA! I’ve never been to South Dakota- have you Jon?

Jon: I have not.

Jackie: Well, we’re going today! 

What’s Keeping You Cozy

Jackie: 10 Deep Breaths- I really do think 10 deep breaths can make almost any situation better! So, I love this little passage from Leo Babauta who writes the blog Zen Habits:

Breathe. If you feel overwhelmed, breathe. It will calm you and release the tensions. If you are worried about something coming up, or caught up in something that already happened, breathe. It will bring you back to the present. If you are moving too fast, breathe. It will remind you to slow down, and enjoy life more. Breathe, and enjoy each moment of this life. They’re too fleeting and few to waste.

• Do you close your eyes when you take the ten deep breaths?
• Do you prefer dry heat or humid heat for your breathing?

Jon: Big Old Trees-  They always have so much character and usually in my experience larger older trees are more likely to have adorable things living in them.

• What is the oldest tree you have ever seen? Petrified wood at disneyland 
• What is the biggest tree you have seen?  The giant redwoods of California

Let’s Get Into It

Jon:  So Mount Rushmore is in The Black Hills of Keystone South Dakota.

Jackie:  There are so many stories about this place

Jon:  The story of a mining town

Jackie:  The Story of a son taking over construction for his father

Jon:  The story of ambition 

Jackie: and compromise 

Jon:  And the story of a baseball team

Jackie:  But I think we should start with the story of a lawyer.

Jon:  Ok I see where you are going here. So, Charles E Rushmore was a lawyer and a Businessman.

Jackie:  And he came out to South Dakota in 1885.

Jon:  He came to South Dakota to check the titles on a number of property deeds for a mining company.

Jackie: And what happened next is a matter of some speculation.

Jon:  I saw some sources that say Charles Rushmoore was walking with a guide named William W. Challis.   When they walked close to the mountain, Rushmore wanted to know the name of the mountain and Challis as a joke said: "Never had any but it has now—we'll call the thing Rushmore."

Jackie:  But, other stories exist too.  I found another source that the Mountains were originally called the Slaughter Mountains and that Charles Rushmore had done so much hunting in the area that he joked that it should be called Rushmore instead and the name stuck.

Jon:  Though we couldn’t find an uncontested fact on how it was named, it was still definitely named after the lawyer Charles Rushmore.

Jackie:  And when Mount Rushmore was being sculpted, he donated $5000 dollars to the project, which is close to $70,000 dollars today!

Jon:  One of the biggest obstacles in the construction of the monument was a lack of funding, so I imagined that his money helped a lot.

Jackie:  Well it probably wasn’t a hard decision for Mr. Rushmore.

Jon:  What do you mean?

Jackie:  If you are rich and someone said “hey see that Mountain that is named after you? well, we are going to carve 4 presidents into the side of it immortalizing them AND YOUR NAME by extension. Would you like to give us some money for the project?”   Would you hesitate to open your wallet?

Jon: Ahhh point taken

Jackie: Heheheh

Jon:  In all seriousness I think we need to go back to before Mount Rushmore was even named Mount Rushmore.

Jackie: Agreed.

Jon: And we need to talk about the Lakota Sioux native american tribe. 

Jackie:  In the Treaty of 1868 the Lakota Sioux were promised a mass of land that was originally theirs and that would remain theirs forever.  This included the land that Mount Rushmore sits on today.

Jon:  The United States government honored the treaty until the 1870’s. When gold was discovered, they took the land from the tribe. 

Jackie:  Then the terrible came. If you are not familiar, I invite everyone listening to look up Wounded Knee in December of 1890.  I will warn you that it is a very violent and sad piece of history, but it is important.

Jon:  If you are looking for a source look up “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown. That's the book I would recommend.  Dee Brown is a fantastic historian and I am looking forward to reading his other works.

Jackie:  One of the things we should point out is that it was actually a Historian who started the entire Mount Rushmore endeavor.  Doane Robinson was his name.

Jon:  Well, what he wanted to do was carve statues into the Needles in South Dakota which are also in the Black Hills. 

Jackie:  The Needles are eroded granite pillars, towers, and spires! In my opinion, they look a bit like a mythological castle from afar!

Jon:   I think If you look at them from far away and you squint they kind of look like people.

Jackie:  They look like rocks- not people Jon.

Jon:  Well you really have squint to see it.

Jackie: Hehehehe

Jon:  Well in 1923 Robinson wanted those existing rock spires to be carved into Red Cloud, explorers Lewis and Clark, and Buffalo Bill Cody, who are all monumental figures of the American West.

Jackie: This is true! He got the idea from Stone Mountain in Georgia which is a pretty awful tourist attraction if I do say so myself. It is a Confederate Sculpture of StoneWall Jackson, Robert E Lee, and Jefferson Davis. 

Jon:  Yes- awful is a good word for it. But, in regards to Mount Rushmore, Robinson wanted to take that idea which was generating tourists and bring something similar to South Dakota so they could have tourists.

Jackie: So Robinson reached out to a Dutch Father and Son sculpting Team named Gutzon Borglum - the father and Lincoln Borglum -the son who were working on Stone Mountain at the time. When Robinson reached out, they had recently had a disagreement with officalis about Stone Mountain and used this new opportunity to abandon that project.

Jon:  They were the ones that had to break it to Robinson that the Granite that was available from the Needles was too poor in quality to be used to make a statue.

Jackie: The Borglum’s looked back at the work of a colleague named Auguste Rodin about the problem.

Jon:  After reviewing his work they decided to get really ambitious and do a really big sculpture

Jackie: And what is bigger than a sculpture that’s literally made out of a mountain.

Jon:  A project of this scale had never been attempted but the three men agreed and decided the sculpture should be of American Presidents instead of Western American icons.

Jackie:  We should also point out that the size of these Statues was set to be much larger.

Jon:  The heads are already the size of a 6 story building!

Jackie:  Yes, but the presidents on mount rushmore were supposed to be carved all the way down to their waists. 

Jon:  You can see evidence of this because an outline is visible of George Washington’s lapel or collar I don’t know. What do you call that?

Jackie:  I don’t know

Jon:  The clothing under his neck

Jackie:  Hehehe…. sure?

Jon:  Let’s go with that. You can see an outline of the clothing under his neck.

Jackie:  The main reason that they had to just sculpt the heads was a lack of funding. They also realized that the heads look good on their own.  You know, I feel like we have not touched on the reason those Four presidents were chosen.

Jon:  I used to think it was because those guys were on the money.

Jackie:  Roosevelt is not on the money

Jon:  That is why I used to think that.

Jackie:  Hehehehe  The Presidents on Mount Rushmore were chosen for specific reasons. Should we talk about them after a quick break?

Jon: I think that’ll work. See you soon.

LET’S GET INTO IT #2

Jon:  The were the four presidents who would represent the nations Birth, Growth, Development, and and

Jackie:  Preservation

Jon:  Thank you George Washington represents Birth for obvious reasons.

Jackie:  Thomas Jefferson represents Growth because of the Lousianna purchase.

Jon:  Theodore Roosevelt represents development because of Industrialization and Conservation.

Jackie:  And Abraham Lincoln represents preservation for winning the Civil War.  

Jon:  Don’t tell anyone I forgot Lincoln

Jackie:  Oh I am telling everyone!

Jon:  Oh no

Jackie:  So the designers Borglum and Borglum physically began sculpting the Mountain on October 4, 1927.

Jon: They carved it by using miners from the area.

Jackie:  That’s Miners as in not Sculptors.  None of them had sculpted before.

Jon:  But they knew how to use dynamite and Jackhammers so that is why they were hired.

Jackie:  Sometimes they hired them for their baseball playing abilities as well.

Jon:  Oh yeah.  One thing that we need to point out how competitive all of these other people who made the statue were. They had a baseball team and they would hire guys that had some skill with America's pastime instead of worrying about any other quality.

Jackie:  There were just over 400 men working on Rushmore and they moved 450,000 tons of Stone to make the sculpture.

Jon:  A lot of these guys were held aloft on the side of the mountain as they did their work by steel cables.   

Jackie:  You need to tell them about the hand cranks.

Jon: oh yeah they could only move up and down by a hand crank.  So someone else would move you up and down the mountain by rotating a crank.  So you had to really trust the people you were working with.

Jackie:  Surprisingly no one died during the construction of the Monument, but some of the workers passed away later from lung disease caused by breathing in the rock dust.

Jon:  They did not know how dangerous that was.  So much about this project was new.  Even the method of sculpting the detail work.  They  had this pointing machine that they would use with a 1 to12 scale model that they already had. 

Jackie:  They kept having to stop production because they would run out of money and there were disputes about whether to have a hall of records.  

Jon:  Congress said no to hollowing out the presidents so they could put the important documents inside.  Borglum said yes to this idea and did it anyway.

Jackie: Well, it’s a little more complicated then that Jon. This seems to have been entirely the idea of Gutzon Borglum, the father. Originally he had wanted to carve a description of what Mount Rushmore was into the rock so that people would know what it was if they stumbled upon it in the future.

Jon: A bit presumptions that he assumed they would understand english.

Jackie: Agreed, but this was his vision. His dreams were crushed when the realized the placement of Thomas Jefferson was not going to work. He was originally placed on the left side of George Washington if you are facing the monument, but once they began carving they realized the granite was not suitlabel and they blew him up and started over on the other side of Washington. This was when Gutzon locked into the idea for his hall of records! He wanted to create a massive cave on the side of the mountain where historical documents of American history would be kept. 

Jon: Congress said no.

Jackie: But, he started it anyway! He secretly used government money to make a hall of records until congress found out and forced him to stop.

Jon: Gutzon then passed away in March of 1941 and the partially created cave was abandoned. His son Linclon continued with the faces of Mount Rushmore.  Which I found funny that a guy named Lincoln carved the face of Lincoln.

Jackie:  Humor is subjective.  Mount Rushmore was completed on October 31, 1941. By completed, I mean that they were out of money and the faces were done. 

Jon:  Oh I forgot to tell you that in 1937 there was a petition to get Susan B. Anthony put on the Mountain that was however a fifth face was something that would not come to pass.

Jackie: But, there was a fifth face of Mt. Rushmore and it is one of my favorite stories.

Jon:  The “face” is not a sculpture if that is what your are thinking. In the 1950’s and 60’s Benjamin Black Elk who was a local Lakota Sioux elder who would dress in his native clothing and take photos with thousands of tourists daily. 

Jackie: That’s how he earned the title of the fifth face of mount rushmore! He is also one of the most photographed people in the world over that period of time! 

Jon: One of the things I really want to see is Mt. Rushmore at night.

Jackie:  It is not that dark. They actually project light on the Monument.

Jon:  I have seen so many other monuments at night and I am convinced that is the way to see them.

Jackie:  It’ll be great to visit once it is safe to after the pandemic.

Jon:  Well you better hurry because Granite erodes at a rate of one inch every year so the sculpture will only last 7 million years. so you better move fast after the pandemic is over.

Jackie :  Oh goodness- so pressed for time.  In all seriousness they do actively repair Mount Rushmore.  At first they would use camouflage copper wire but now they use fiber optic cable.  They can make the cable any color they want, so they can blend it into the rocks! Very cool!

Jon:  Well that is all I have.

Jackie:  Jon. We didn’t even talk about the Disneylands. We can’t be done.

Jon: Mount Rushmore Memorial Park is about 1,278 acres which is about 2 ½ disneylands. 

Jackie: Ok, now we’re done.  We will be back with our community shoutout after a quick word from one of our sponsors!

Ad Break 

10 DEEP BREATHS

Hello, friends. I’m Blossom. Welcome to Breathing with Blossom. Alright, let's begin with 10 deep breaths. Feel free to follow along.

(10 deep breaths)

Ah- just wonderful! Congratulations on completing your first class.  If you would like to sign up for my next class where we dive right into the much more complex 11 deep breaths it will be 1,100 dollars. I hope to see you there! 

BIG OLD TREES

Jon:  Ok mister tree we are rolling and we are ready to record your 30 second radio add ok

Tree ok

Jon:Ok in 5 4 3

Tree:  Hello I am a tree and I run the big old tree shop. We have a lot of fine products such as…

Jon:  Ok that you mister tree everything sounds good we will be sure to send it over to the station.

Tree ok

Community Shoutout/ Outro (rate+ review/ WEDNESDAY)

Jackie: Every episode we like to take the time to research and highlight something special in the community that we are exploring!

Jon: Today’s community shoutout is the Black Hills playhouse!

Jackie: Just 30 minutes from Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills playhouse is a non-profit theater that presents shows for you to enjoy!

Jon: They also have theater education programs.

Jackie: THEATER CAMP! It’s the best type of camp!

Jon: Unfortunately is it July of 2020 and the playhouse is closed because of the pandemic, but their upcoming 2021 season will include some great shows! 

Jackie: The shows are The Odd Couple, Something Rotten, A Gentlemans Guide To Love and Murder, and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.  Wow- that’s a lot to look forward to next year!

Jon: If you would like to support the Black HIlls Playhouse you can donate through their website or go see a show in 2021!

Jackie: I would definitely plan a trip to Mount Rushmore around catching a show at the playhouse! That would be a blast!

Jon: Agreed. That would be great! Well, that’s all for this week. Thank you so much to our producer Charles.

Jackie: Thank you Charles! And thank you so much to our listeners! It means the world that you take the time to join us on our weekly explorations! If you have been enjoying this podcast it would mean the world to us if you took the time to rate us and write a review!

Jon: We will be back Wednesday with our next EXPLORATION! 

Jackie: Yes, on WEDNESDAYS we explore!

Jon: Stay cozy, and we’ll see you soon.