The Flawed Men of Mount Rushmore | History Traveler Episode 83

[Music] [Music] throughout human history people have found different ways to i guess kind of leave their mark so on almost every continent of the world you have cave drawings go to egypt there's the sphinx there's the pyramids in the united [Music] of the most states landmarks in the united states uh i haven't been here since i was a kid so pretty excited to see what we got here today [Music] mount rushmore like i said one of the most iconic landmarks in the united states and you might be looking at what i'm looking at right now and thinking where are all the people well the answer is they're still in bed if you want to get here when there are no crowds now you got to wake up early i'm not going to show all of them but along this walkway they have markers for every u.s state and all of the territories and [Music] commonwealths [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] there it is mount rushmore depicting washington jefferson lincoln and roosevelt uh this was started in 1927. washington was dedicated in 1930 jefferson in 36 lincoln in 37 and roosevelt in 1939 and i think the the final carving was in 1941. originally the idea for this was to have life-size sculptings of all four of the presidents and you can see where they started with washington and then i think they just ran out of funding is what it was so if you look at washington here for example his head is 60 feet high so from the top of his head to his chin the mouth is about 18 feet wide and his nose is about 21 feet high all right just now walking into the museum here we don't have a ton of time so this is going to be a quick walk through now here's something that i never really thought of uh the enemy to a structure like mount rushmore is water so in order to keep the structure sound for as long as we can they have to do maintenance from time to time and seal up cracks so that water doesn't get in there and then freeze and expand and weather the sculptures over time look at this they actually have sensors up on george washington's head that allow for constant monitoring of the sculpture [Music] this is kind of interesting looking at some of the tools that were used to measure out the the faces on mount rushmore so this is a just kind of a model showing how a plumb bob would be used to see how far out they needed to go here you can see a big old set of calipers now this is what mount rushmore looked like before the carving took place and then you can see as you go along here the different tools that they used in order to carve out the mountain interesting to see the process here at the museum so here's an extra little tidbit that they have here that's interesting they talk about uh the work of the civilian conservation corps during the great depression here in the black hills area and uh we were at devil's tower the other day so if you haven't watched that video you can go back and look at it but here's some items that were found at the ccc camp at devil's tower huh something about mount rushmore that people may not know is that there's i guess you could say kind of a hidden room behind the sculpture called the hall of records and the door to it is right back there yeah and here's what the doorway to the hall of records looks like you can't go up there unfortunately or else i would but anyway there it is all right just uh took a quick little round through the museum and now headed down to the sculpture studio so i'm down here a little bit closer to the base of mount rushmore now and uh here on this path they have a bust of guts on borglum who was the sculptor that is behind mount rushmore and uh they also have you know a few quotes over here one from borglum himself talking about the importance of the monument and another from calvin coolidge who was the president during the dedication in 1927 whenever they got this project started [Music] so this is right here at the sculptor's studio and they have a thing here showing the five steps to carve a mountain so first they would map out a plan and have the models here in the studio i think it's interesting that you can see here in the model that the original plan was to have more i guess more of the torso in the final sculpture and then they will go up on the mountain take measurements blast a bunch of the rock out with dynamite and then you'd have these workers basically hanging off of swing sets uh that would use jackhammers and chisels and things like that to drill holes and then you do the finish work really quite an amazing thing that they were able to get such detail carved out of that big huge rock all right they just opened up the sculptor studio so we're going to go in and take a look inside and see what they got in there back in the museum i just mentioned the hall of records these are the plans that borghum had for the hall of records at mount rushmore now this is really interesting to me this is the scale model that they had for mount rushmore and this is what it was originally supposed to look like so you can see that washington was originally going to have you know a lot more of his torso showing he had thomas jefferson behind him you could see his hand looks like teddy roosevelt was kind of getting shoved to the back no matter what and they were supposed to have a lot more of abraham lincoln as well but then i think they ran out of funding and and couldn't complete it to its original design wow getting ready to go on the presidential trail to the grand view terrace and they say that this is a strenuous trail with 250 steps good we're making our way around the presidential trail here and uh it's really nice this wasn't here whenever i was a kid but you can get up close and see a lot more detail such as the detail that was put into teddy roosevelt's glasses they also have different information panels as you go around telling about each one of the individual presidents on mount rushmore such as my favorite teddy roosevelt and here they have a quote from him which says all my life and politics i have striven to make the necessary working compromise between the ideal and the practical good words of advice we're about halfway through the presidential trail getting ready to make this uh final climb up these steps to get to the closest part of mount rushmore all right approaching the end or at least the close end of the presidential trail and man look at the view of mount rushmore that you get from here really have to admire the work that went into this and just the really the artistry to be able to carve these four figures in such detail out of this mountain amazing down here in the boulder field below the sculptures you can see all kinds of evidence of where these rocks were drilled and dynamited and blasted out i don't know it's kind of interesting to me look at how crazy this world has become with this pandemic even abraham lincoln is wearing a mask all right so that was mount rushmore ah man incredible place that i think everybody needs to try and visit at least once now there's been some controversy about mount rushmore you know in recent days uh some people suggesting that it needs to be completely blown off the mountain or torn down a lot of that comes from you know washington and jefferson's history of being slave owners we have to understand that that was the time they were living in and they were inheriting a system that had been around for thousands of years i'm not defending slavery it was absolutely wrong and they were they were wrong to have had slaves but i know that history is made up of people and people are deeply flawed so i mean if you're looking for the the perfect man or the perfect woman you're going to find yourself perpetually disappointed jefferson roosevelt martin luther king jr jfk they they all were deeply flawed but they all made great contributions as well so i i wonder if we can have some grace and and maybe some forgiveness for the people of the past i wonder if we can kind of learn from their successes and also learn from their their shortcomings and try to be better people today because who knows what history will judge us harshly over anyway those are just a few thoughts that i had while i was here uh amazing place if you ever get a chance come to mount rushmore you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 44,302

Keywords: history, history traveler, history underground, south dakota travel, south dakota, black hills, lakota, worlds largest, mount rushmore, lincoln, washington, jefferson, roosevelt, slavery, mount rushmore protest, mount rushmore national memorial, mount rushmore secret room

Id: OQnlEvzKu_U

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020