Borglum's imagination had been set of fire. He was no longer interested in carving statues of cowboys and Indiana. To him, the "garden of the gods" was fit for nothing less than a national monument. Robinson and the others readily agreed. All they really wanted was an attraction awesome enough to draw tourists. The crowds flocking to see the unfinished monument at Stone Mountain were proof enough of the appeal of gigantic carving. As far as the men from South Dakota were concerned, Borglum could carve whatever suited him. The sculptor was delighted. While he and the others spoke, Borglum made preliminary sketches that showed Washington and Lincoln emerging from a towering granite needle.

Borglum and his crew returned to Georgia to finish the Southern memorial while Robinson and Senator Peter Norbeck introduced the necessary South Dakota legislation and organized a fundraising committee. The Dakotans' activities received a great deal of publicity, which so upset the Stone Mountain commissioners that they took action. Their growing feud with Borglum exploded on a night of September 25, 1925.

The sculptor was in Washington trying to raise money for the financially strapped Southern monument when the Georgia committee voted to fire him. Returning to Georgia on the next train, Borglum went straight to the top of the mountain and kicked his model over the side. The commissioners swore out a warrant for his arrest and sent the sheriff after him. In a midnight chase worthy of Hollywood, Borglum escaped across the North Carolina border.

The sculptor set up a studio on the North Carolina State Fairgrounds and began making a new Stone Mountain model, but instead of calling him back to the mountain, the Georgia committee increased their verbal attackers. The newspapers got into the act with daily reports and the Governor of North Carolina became Borglum's champion. When Georgia demanded Borglum's extradition, the Governor ringed the fairgrounds with his state's militia and dared the Georgians to take the exiled sculptor.

The whole affair seemed funny to everyone but Borglum. He had given his heart, his soul and much of his money to the carving, but as the rhetoric increased and the bitterness grew, he realized that the memorial was doomed. Sadly he put it behind him and turned his attention to South Dakota.

By August of 1926, he was ready to start searching for a suitable site for carving. The idea of sculpting in the Needles, the tall rock formations on the main highway, had been abandoned. Two many people were opposed to what they called tampering with the beauty of Nature. A logical compromise was to find a mountain in a remote area that was not in public view. "I knew," Borglum later confessed, "that no matter where we carved, roads would be build and the public would find us. Besides, I felt like a carved needle would look too much like a totem pole."

The South Dakota committee set up a camp, complete with a corral and a string of western ponies, at the base of Mount harney. Borglum loved the outdoors, loved sleeping in tents, eating by an open fire and fly casting in nearby Hanging Squaw Creek. Each morning, after a hearty breakfast, he left camp with his son and a few guides and followed old Indian trains to promising formations.

Borglum knew exactly what he wanted. A sculptor who plans to shape a mountain the way other sculptors shape lumps of clay must know. He was looking for a huge, sheet face of stone as free of faults and minerals as possible. He wanted it to be high enough "so it will not pay future generations to pull down what we will put up there." Borglum remembered how British artillery men had practiced gunnery on the Sphinx during the First World War.

One day, the scouting party was approaching a particularly promising mountain. Borglum asked, "What's that called?" "Used to be Slaughterhouse Rock," the guide answered with a grin, "and before that, Cougar Mountain, because they trapped a cat up there once, but when this dude came visiting, they changed the name again." Then the guide told about Charles Rushmore, a young New York Lawyer who had come to the Hills in 1905 to inspect a clients tin mines. "What's that called?" Rushmore had asked when he first saw the mountain, just as Borglum did twenty years later. Slaughterhouse Rock, but we can change it. How does Mount Rushmore sound?"

It sounded fine, and the name stuck. If Rushmore had knows the mountain was destined for fame, he might not have laughed so loud. When the carving started, Rushmore was so embarrassed by reporters trying to find out what he had done to deserve the honor that he contributed five thousand dollars to the monument.

After climbing the face of Mt. Rushmore, Borglum was certain that he had found his mountain. Now he had to decide what to put there. Many people opposed the idea of national monument that portrayed only Washington and Lincoln. Everyone wanted to include his personal hero. The favoritism continues; someone is always suggesting that another head be added. Susan B. Anthony was mentioned most often, but Woodrow Wilson, Clark Gable, FDR, John Palooka, Micky Mouse, Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King have all had their moment. None will ever make it. The four existing heads already cover every available inch of Rushmore stone and they tell the story as Borglum saw it.

Borglum explained his choices this way: Washington was selected because he was the father of our country, and Jefferson because he expressed our beliefs in the Declaration of Independence and expanded our territory with the Louisiana Purchase. Lincoln was chosen for preserving the Union, and Teddy Roosevelt because he fulfilled the expansionist's dream by linking the oceans with the Panama Canal. The selection of Lincoln was the most controversial. After the bitter failure of Stone Mountain, Southerners were violently against "their" artist honoring a man they thought of as a traitor, but the South had little influence on South Dakota thinking. The choice of Teddy Roosevelt provoked the most ridicule. It was assumed that he was chosen because Borglum had been a leader of Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party, and the newspapers made much of the fact that Roosevelt and Borglum looked very much alike. Fortunately, no one took the debates on the selection of subjects seriously. They were a good way to get publicity, but Borglum was the sculptor. He had the right to choose.

The job of raising money was the most difficult, and it fell largely on Borglum and a few South Dakota businessmen. They hoped to persuade a few tycoons to underwrite the hold project, and when their appeals fell on deaf ears, the project bogged down. However, in 1927 a monument drive was started in the South Dakota schools, and when the youngsters willingly gave their nickels and dimes everyone took heart. The big break came that same year, when in a show of faith that held out the promise of federal assistance, Calvin Coolidge agreed to vacation in the Black Hills. The committee immediately announced that there would be a dedication ceremony when the President arrived, and Borglum began to plan the show.

By the time the presidential party reached the hills, everything was ready. Hanging Squaw Creek, renamed Grace Coolidge Creek, had been stocked with rainbow trout and blocked with hidden nets so the fish could not swim away. "This is either the best trout stream in the word," Silent Cal said as he pulled trout his tenth trout on his tenth try, "or I'm the best fisherman that every was." The night before the dedication a huge barbecue was held in nearby Keystone. There was music and dancing. Huge sides of beef and buffalo were roasted over open fires, and there was enough mountain moonshine to please everyone.

In the morning, Borglum hired an open cockpit airplane and flew over the summer White House, sprinkling rose petals in honor of the First Lady. The pilot dipped his wings and Borglum waved to the group below, then hastily landed to get ready for the ceremony.

A huge crowd was slowly gathering in front of the mountain as the presidential limousine was pulled up the final grade by a team of horses from a local stable. The crowd cheered when the President stepped from his automobile wearing his usual New England vested suit with a ten gallon hat and fancy, hand tooled cowboy boots. Without any fanfare, Coolidge walked to the speaker's platform and stood there, solemnly shaking hands with the children who had lined up early to receive that honor.

After the President's speech, Borglum was slowly lowered down the face of the mountain. The crowd grew silent as the sculptor carefully drilled four pilot holes for the head of George Washington; then they began to cheer wildly as he waved and walked back up the face of the mountain.

Borglum's crew of hard rock miners carved for over fourteen years. The monument was plagued by financial problems as the country plunged into the depression of the 30's, but Borglum refused to give up. The same bickering that had destroyed Stone Mountain threatened Rushmore at times. The businessman temperament of the committee sometimes clashed with the artist's ego, but fortunately everyone agreed that the carving was what counted and the bickering never got out of hand.

As the giant heads (proportioned to men 465 feet tall) took shape, Borglum ran into unexpected problems. Jefferson was started on Washington's right, but a poorly placed charge of dynamite sloped the forehead, beyond repair and the design had to be changed. Borglum blew the nascent head off the mountain and started again on the other side. This forced the Roosevelt head back into the rock. Then a hidden fault forced the Roosevelt head even further back, until the final carving ended within 10 feet of the canyon that lies behind the monument. Other problems were caused by traces of heavy deposits of brittle feldspar, while veins of silver run like worry lines across the face of Abraham Lincoln

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