Why Mount Rushmore is the Weirdest Monument | Adam Ruins Everything

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I love Mount Rushmore the history the grandeur the outdoor freeze resistant pedestal fountains it's America's greatest National Monument I have to disagree now Rushmore is America's weirdest National Monument not the greatest first it's actually surprisingly small the heads are only 60 feet tall or about one-tenth the size of the Washington Monument and it was also never finished the rubble at the base is just debris from the construction no one cleaned up but most importantly the history of Mount Rushmore is real weird oh yeah I did always wonder why we carved president heads into the side of a mountain what's up with that well this National Monument was actually designed to be a national tourist trap in the 1920s a group of South Dakota historians was trying to figure out how to attract tourists to their state hmm how do we get people to come see our big boring rocks will carve Wild West legends into them oh boy rocks [Music] [Music] beautifully unfortunately for them the sculptor they hired a man named Gutzon Borglum Oh bad name well he had his own ideas through this Wild West crap I shall fill your mountain with presidents a noble project that will immortalize me Gutzon Borglum okay but then he carved all our greatest presidents Washington was the first Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence Lincoln ended slavery and Roosevelt he liked hunting and he was friends with the sculptor Teddy you are the coolest I'm gonna sculpt your face into a mountain Wow you're like obsessed with me that's the reason he was on the monument and people were cool with that they pretty much had to be Borglum was incredibly stubborn about doing things his way in fact his original plan for the monument was a little bit too ambitious I'll sculpt the heads then their entire torsos and inside the heads I'll build a whole of Records and that's where we'll store the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence he wanted to put the Constitution in a mountain in South Dakota I mean I love South Dakota and even I think that's insane yep Borglum became so obsessed that Congress even threatened to cut his funding I'm not paying for your fashion project stick to the sculpture or you're cut off Borglum but he had only finished the heads when in 1941 he died oh come on since the sculptor was dead and the project was out of money his workers decided to call it quits well we did the heads and bore ones dead time for us to go to bed [Music] okay so this sculptor was a maniac whose name sounds like some Swedish Muppets death rattle and the monument was never finished that's not so bad and it was built on stolen Native American land yeah that's worse in 1868 the United States signed a treaty agreeing that this land would remain part of the Sioux Nation we've taken a lot from y'all so you keep this land and we'll stay out but six years later that all changed when General Custer found gold found what how much sorry sure two said no take-backsies it was a real Custer flick in 1980 the Supreme Court ruled this land grab unconstitutional and ordered federal compensation now worth over 1 billion dollars the problem is the Sioux don't want the money so to this day it's sitting on hold in the US Treasury wait why don't you take the money it was never about the money we just want our land back think about it our government broke a treaty stole Native American land and then carved our own leaders faces into it that's such an insult and for what so tourists can come see a big version of the heads on our money I never thought I'd say this but North Dakota was right not much more does suck hey Adam here if you like that be sure to watch all new episodes of Adam ruins everything every Tuesday at 10:00 on truTV

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Channel: CollegeHumor

Views: 4,566,820

Rating: 4.3645077 out of 5

Keywords: Collegehumor, CH originals, comedy, sketch comedy, internet, humor, funny, sketch, mount rushmore, adam ruins everything, adam ruins mount rushmore, adam ruins history, mount rushmore history, mount rushmore secrets, behind the scenes, adam ruins

Id: A8QQBRIqZmw

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 4min 47sec (287 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017

Reddit Comments

Doesn't really burn South Dakota, just Mount Rushmore.

I'm curious though why they left of the other reason why work on the monument ceased: would they have continued work on the hall of records it would have made the mountain unstable and caused it to collapse.

Also, I'm curious why they didn't mention the monument to crazy horse?

👍︎︎ 17 👤︎︎ u/Narcolapser 📅︎︎ Sep 20 2017 🗫︎ replies

Yea, i'm not a huge fan of Mt. Rushmore, but that was pretty damn weak. None of his points really ruined anything, just the unfortunate events from history. Who the fuck says Roosevelt was a bad president?