Brother Gutzon Borglum was the genius who carved
the impressive Mount Rushmore National Monument.

I first visited Mr. Rushmore in Black Hills, South Dakota, in February 1983. I was in Rapid City, South Dakota, to speak in a local church. Ned E. Wick was my host. I had met him while teaching at a theological school in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1979.

One afternoon, he took me out to see the Mount Rushmore National Monument. The beauty and size of the monument is overwhelming. Each President’s head is 60 feet high, scaled to a man who would stand 465 feet tall, if fully carved. Each nose is 20 feet long, and the eyes are 11 feet wide. Lincoln’s mole is 16 inches across.

The genius behind this massive monument was Brother John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (photo below), best known as Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941). Born in Idaho and educated in Nevada, he was an active Mason, raised in Howard Lodge #35, New York City, on June 10, 1904, and serving as its Worshipful Master 1910-11. In 1915, he was appointed Grand Representative of the Grand Lodge of Denmark near the Grand Lodge of New York. He received his Scottish Rite Degrees in the New York City Consistory on October 25, 1907.

For the Mount Rushmore monument, Bro. Borglum chose four Presidents to stand as epic symbols of our nation: George Washington, “Father of the Nation”; Thomas Jefferson, prime author of the Declaration of Independence and a leader in continental growth westward; Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, trustbuster, conservationist, and expansionist; and Abraham Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator” who preserved the Union. Of these four, Washington and Roosevelt were Freemasons.

Bro. Borglum’s son, Lincoln Borglum, helped his father and, after his father’s death, completed the Mount Rushmore National Monument. He was also a Mason, raised in Battle River Lodge #92 of Hermosa, South Dakota.

Sculpturing four gigantic heads on a granite mountainside was an immense technical feat. Gutzon Borglum accomplished it by devising innovative sculptural techniques and carrying them out with dynamite and jackhammers. It took great determination—450 tons of rock had to be blasted off the face of the mountain before he got down to stone which was hard enough to hold the carvings. It took 14 years to bring the sculpture to its present appearance, but because of delays caused by lack of funds and bad weather, only six and a half years were actually spent in carving the monument.

I think what impresses me the most about the Mount Rushmore National Monument is that Gutzon Borglum didn’t start sculpting the monument until 1927 when he was 60 years old. Even at that late age, he had a dream and achieved it! How easy is it to say, “I know enough. I have done my share. I am content with what I have done. No more projects for me. Let some younger man carry the load.” Not so for Brother Borglum. He actually worked on the monument until he died at age 74. His son then picked up his father’s tools and completed the work.

Regardless of our chronological age, we become old whenever we quit growing or working and are content with the past. This is especially true in our journeys in Masonry.

It may be time for us to renew the quest of learning and growing as Masons. There may be nothing worse than laying down our tools while we can still labor in the quarries of life.

It is time to dream again! But, let’s not only dream, let’s do some carving, too!

We live in a small world. I did not know it at the time, but Ned Wick is a Mason. He is a member of Mt. Rushmore Lodge #220, a longtime Personal Representative (now retired) of the Valley of Deadwood, South Dakota, and a 33° Scottish Rite Mason. He was honored with the Grand Cross, Scottish Rite’s highest honor, in 1999. Bro. Wick serves on the Board of Directors, Center for Inter-faith Studies, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Note: The above essay, edited for Journal format, is reprinted with permission from the CIS Masonic Report, A Publication of the Center for Interfaith Studies, Inc. (June 2004).

Gary LeazerValley of Atlanta, Georgia, was on the staff of the Interfaith Witness Department of the Southern Baptist Convention for 14 years. He is now the CEO of the Center for Interfaith Studies, Editor of the CIS Masonic Report and the Royal Arch Mason Magazine, and Grand Chaplain, Grand Lodge of Georgia. To contact the author or subscribe to the CIS Masonic Report, write to P.O. Box 870523, Stone Mountain, GA 30087; Tel. 770-979-6313; or e-mail garyleazer@mindspring.com.

The Legend of the Coffee Break

One cold morning on top of Mt. Rushmore, Borglum’s crew, who were called the Keystone Boys, were huddled in a shack warming up with some coffee. Borglum burst in and yelled, “What’s going on here?” When one of the laborers said they were just having some coffee, Borglum said to his handyman, “See to it that about 10:00 every morning we get some doughnuts and coffee up here for these men.” According to local legend, that is how the coffee break was born.