When I was growing up, Mount Rushmore was assumed to be synonymous with patriotism. My elementary and junior high classes taught history, which was designed to create better future citizens. My school was segregated. The history was Eurocentric. We celebrated Columbus Day as if Columbus were a hero. It was a childhood rite of passage to make a pilgrimage to the Black Hills of South Dakota in the family station wagon to see the four Presidents carved in granite with dynamite and jackhammers.
My first view of Mount Rushmore was from Iron Mountain Road, a 17-mile scenic drive purposefully built as an orchestral prelude to the viewing of the monument. From a distance you would gradually see the giant faces get larger and larger as you approached. It is a beautiful and fun drive with pig-tail bridges and one-lane tunnels, which frame Rushmore as you approach. Back then, once you arrived, the visitor's center was a beautiful, but small and simple, Mid-Century Modern structure that offered a modest selection of souvenirs, food and restrooms. The visitor's center did not compete with the sculptures. The structure was in service to the Monument. If you have seen Hitchcock's North by Northwest, the visitor's center was where Eva Marie Saint supposedly shot Cary Grant.
That visitor's center was torn down in the 1990s to make room for a much-expanded visitors center to better accommodate the monument's 2 million visitors per year. A four-lane interstate type highway zooms you to the multi-level parking structure. You proceed through the Avenue of Flags, with each of the 50 states represented. Then you then run a gauntlet of souvenirs and refreshments. The new visitors center certainly handles flow of traffic better. However, the parking structure and restaurants, bathrooms and souvenir shops resemble a giant shopping mall, which competes with the carvings for your attention. The approach seems like a "Shine of mass-consumerism". Personally, I would have preferred to expand the 1950s visitor's center and move the parking lot to the nearby town of Keystone with shuttle buses running every few minutes to protect the monument's sense of place.
Years ago, I briefly attempted to make a living as a sculptor. I failed. I spent hundreds of hours trying to visualize how to liberate a beautiful form out of a block of stone or a tree trunk. As a result, I became fascinated by Gutzon Borglum's mission to carve Rushmore. I admired his gumption and relentless effort to achieve his goals. He had arrogance to match his talent. I reluctantly admired that as well. I started a collection of vintage Rushmore souvenirs from the 1930s through the 1950s including a couple plaster casts of Washington and Lincoln with a chunk of Rushmore granite stuck in the back along with Borglum's signature.
Over the years, I have come to discover that Mount Rushmore is complicated. The initial idea began with local boosters who wanted to create a tourist attraction to draw customers along with their money to the Black Hills. Borglum transformed their idea from cowboys and Indians carved along the Needles Highway into something far more colossal, a "Shrine of Democracy". Another way to look at it is that Rushmore is implicitly a monument to the notion of "Manifest Destiny", built on and carved into sacred Native American land. Race does come into play. Borglum was strongly associated with the KKK. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court determined the Black Hills were rightly owned by the Sioux tribes. Their land had been stolen and the Sioux Nation deserved compensation. The compensation offered was considered too low and the issue is not yet resolved. So, the placement of four U. S. Presidents who strongly represented the notion of Manifest Destiny on sacred Indian land was an affront to many Americans.
Nevertheless, I can still admire Rushmore in much the same way I can admire Major League Baseball prior to Jackie Robinson. There were some truly wonderful seasons with charismatic players in the all-white era, but I don't think anyone can argue that the game of baseball was better when it was exclusively white. There is so much more talent now playing the game. Likewise, patriotism is so much more legitimate when it includes all Americans. Mount Rushmore is a fascinating relic of an era of segregation and where manifest destiny was an article of faith. Despite their flaws, the four Presidents represented are my personal favorites. A trip to the Black Hills is definitely worth it.
Take a walk with Birkenstock.
