10/05/2026
Work begins—two words that changed a granite hillside forever. On this day, 99 years ago, crews in South Dakota’s Black Hills started carving what became Mount Rushmore. Conceived to draw visitors to a young state and to tell a sweeping story of the republic, the monument pairs artistry with audacity: Washington for the nation’s birth, Jefferson for its expansion, Lincoln for union and equality, and Theodore Roosevelt for the modern American state and conservation.
Here’s a detail many miss: about 90% of the mountain was shaped not by chisels but by dynamite—precision “honeycombing” blasts that removed rock within inches of the final contours before hand-finishing. Funding waxed and waned through the Depression, plans shifted (Jefferson had to be moved after flawed rock), and the grand lower bodies and inscriptions were scrapped to save costs. What remained, completed 12 years later, was a national icon—and a reminder of how infrastructure, art, tourism, and storytelling can converge on a single slope of granite.
