By August , Borglum had agreed to work on Mount Rushmore—but not the way Robinson had pitched it. Theodore Roosevelt, who had overseen the construction of the Panama Canal, was a symbol of economic growth. And Abraham Lincoln was selected for having fought to preserve the nation in the Civil War. Over the next 16 years, Borglum wrangled with the federal government about funding and control of Mount Rushmore—which he never technically completed.
Borglum hoped to carve the presidents down to their waists and chisel a description of the memorial next to them. S historical artifacts. In , Borglum began blasting a foot tunnel into the mountain for his Hall of Records. Worried about funding as war loomed in Europe, however, the U. Borglum was still refining those heads when his health began to deteriorate. He died on March 6, , leaving his son, Lincoln, to continue his work.
The project was declared finished on October 31, The tunnel that Borglum had drilled for the Hall of Records sat empty for decades until , when the National Park Service placed a titanium vault in the floor, filling it with information on Mount Rushmore, the presidents, and U. However, the filming itself sparked a controversy. The National Park Service and the U. Department of the Interior cried foul, and ultimately asked Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to remove the credit line at the end of the movie thanking them for their cooperation.
Mount Rushmore opened to the public even as the Lakota continued legal challenges. In the decades since, the memorial and its surroundings have served as a flash point for the treatment of Native Americans.
Although the loss of the land was a far bigger concern for many Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, Hill says that some indigenous people wanted the site to recognize their history, too.
Native nations have also taken issue with the way Mount Rushmore told their story—and that of U. As Sprague points out, even Lincoln was enthusiastic about western expansion and, in , dispatched U. Related: Untangling the complex legacy of Teddy Roosevelt at the national park bearing his name.
The civil rights movement of the s inspired a wave of protest among Native Americans across the country. In the summer of , protest came to Mount Rushmore when a few dozen activists from the organization United Native Americans scaled the memorial to demand the return of the Black Hills to the Lakota. They camped atop the memorial for months—and then returned the following summer for a briefer protest that ended in their arrests. In , the long-running legal dispute finally reached the U.
Supreme Court. In the landmark United States v. But the Lakota declined the compensation and have since advocated for the return of the Black Hills instead. On July 4, , more than a hundred demonstrators gathered at a Fourth of July rally held by President Donald Trump to protest the memorial and remind attendees that it was built on stolen land.
Related: How indigenous protesters helped spawn a conservation movement in British Columbia. Forces began campaigning to add faces to Mount Rushmore while the monument was still under construction. But in , thanks to nine brilliant In the summer of , Janis Joplin was a drifter; four years later, she was a rock-and-roll legend.
Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Created by Darren Star and A cargo plane crashes into an apartment building near an airport in Amsterdam, Holland, on October 4, Four people aboard the plane and approximately more in the apartment building lost their lives in the disaster.
An El-Al Boeing cargo jet was scheduled to bring Televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and of conspiring to defraud the public. The case against the founder of Praise the Lord PTL Ministries and three of his aides exploded in the press when it was revealed that Bakker had sex with President Abraham Lincoln observes a balloon demonstration near Washington, D.
Both Confederate and Union armies experimented with using balloons to gather military intelligence in the early stages of the war, but the balloons proved to be dangerous and impractical for most Some 7, mourners attended her funeral.
Smith had been killed a few days before when the old Packard she was driving hit a parked truck near Coahoma, Mississippi, between On October 4, , Gen. Senator Norbeck was stunned that Borglum had turned down the offer of full federal funding. The bill also called for the creation of a 12 member Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission, with members appointed by the President.
Coolidge appointed 10 members, leaving the final two spots to be filled by incoming president Herbert Hoover. When Herbert Hoover took office, he quickly appointed the final two members to the commission, but did not seem in a hurry to meet with the commission, as required by the funding bill before work on the memorial could begin. Congressman Williamson was asked to make an appointment with the President and request that he organize the first commission meeting.
Frustrated by the slow pace, Borglum decided to attempt to visit President Hoover himself. When he arrived at the White House, Borglum got into an altercation with the President's secretary and Williamson's appointment was canceled.
Congressman Williamson was able to eventually reschedule a meeting with Hoover and convince him of the importance of the project and conducting the first commission meeting. President Hoover met with the commission within a few days, and officers were elected. This amount matched what had already been spent on the project by the previous Mount Harney Memorial Association. The one person most responsible for conceiving the idea and who supported it for so long, Robinson's name was inexplicably not even on the list of potential candidates to serve on the commission.
He continued to support the project and generously offered, "Let me help where I can. With the commission organized and money in the bank, Borglum could now begin to work in earnest on the mountain. He hired workers who began to install machinery and construct facilities. During the 's Senator Norbeck worked tirelessly to secure continued funding through emergency relief programs that were part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which were also matched with funds from the original appropriation bill.
In , President Roosevelt signed Executive Order , which drastically changed the management of the project. Mount Rushmore was now placed under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service and was supervised by engineer Julian Spotts, who began to look for ways to improve efficiency and working conditions. Gutzon Borglum, always uneasy with outside control over his projects, became resentful of being under "the watchful eye of the government. Borglum successfully returned control of the project to an appointed commission, mostly of his choosing, in The new commission allowed Borglum nearly complete control over most aspects of the project.
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