00:00In 1925, sculptor Gutzon Borglum stood before a South Dakota cliff with an impossible vision,
00:06carving presidents into solid rock. He had 400 desperate men willing to risk their lives for
00:1250 cents an hour, but no one had solved the critical problem. How do you transfer a tiny
00:17model onto a mountain without one fatal mistake, destroying months of work?
00:22South Dakota in the early 1,920 seconds was a place people left, not a place they visited.
00:28State historian Don Robinson watched helplessly as other states prospered while his own slowly
00:34withered away. Towns shrank. Young people moved east. Then Robinson heard about a new sculpture
00:40in Georgia drawing thousands of tourists. What if South Dakota could have its own monument?
00:45Something so grand that people would travel across the country just to see it. He needed someone bold
00:51enough to dream impossibly big. That person was Gutzon Borglum, a 60-year-old sculptor with a
00:57reputation for projects others called insane. When Robinson suggested carving Wild West heroes,
01:03Borglum shook his head, presidents, national figures that would make this America's monument.
01:09In the summer of 1925, Borglum stood before a 500-feet granite cliff called Mount Rushmore.
01:17At 60 years old, he was staring at a project that would consume the rest of his life. He knew
01:22it,
01:22and he didn't care. Construction began in 1927. When the Great Depression hit, men who had lost
01:27everything arrived at this remote mountain. Miners who couldn't find work. Farmers whose land had
01:33dried up and blown away. They came for survival. 50 cents an hour. That's what it paid to dangle from
01:39a cliff face with nothing but a rope between you and certain death. Picture a father of three who lost
01:45his farm. His children were hungry. He showed up to operate a 30-kilograms jackhammer while suspended
01:50hundreds of feet in the air for eight hours straight. 400 men, just like him, did the same
01:56thing. They had no choice. These weren't artists. They were gold miners with calloused hands. Most had
02:03never carved anything in their lives. Before a single face could be carved, they had to build
02:08everything from nothing. Roads snaked up the mountain. A village materialized at the base with
02:12tool shops and small houses. An enormous wooden staircase was hammered into the mountainside.
02:18504 steps. Men climbed those steps every morning, knowing some might not climb back down.
02:24Three massive air compressors pumped compressed air through 2,000 feet of pipe, powering up to 16
02:30jackhammers simultaneously. Workers developed survival techniques, installing chains to hold
02:36onto, using their feet to guide the jackhammers. When bits wore down every few hours, steel workers
02:41descended with replacements. The dynamite work was terrifying. One wrong calculation and tons of
02:47granite could come crashing down, taking men with it. They'd set charges, scramble to safety,
02:52and hold their breath as explosions shattered the silence. Somehow, miraculously, in 14 years of
02:59this dangerous work, not a single worker died. But Borglum faced a problem that kept him awake at night.
03:06How do you transfer a vision onto a mountain? He had a five-feet model. The mountain towered 60 feet
03:12high. One mistake in months of work would be ruined forever. The ancient Greeks had used pointing
03:18machines to copy sculptures. Simple tools that measured angles and distances, but those were for
03:23identical copies, not scaling something up twelve times. Borglum needed something that had never
03:29existed, so he invented it. A giant pointing machine installed at the top of Mount Rushmore with a
03:34weighted arm that could measure three coordinates. Measurements from his model could be multiplied by
03:39twelve and transferred directly onto stone. Thousands of points, thousands of measurements, each one
03:46telling a worker exactly where to drill and how deep. Workers drilled honeycomb patterns, holes so close
03:51together that the rock between them would crumble away. Hour after hour, day after day, their arms
03:58aching. Then came the eyes. Traditional sculptures had smooth, lifeless eyes. Borglum wanted these
04:04presidents to look like they could see across centuries. So he designed something revolutionary.
04:09Deep holes, always in shadow, with small square sections left uncut to catch light, creating the
04:15illusion of reflection, of life, of awareness. Carving those eyes was the most dangerous work.
04:21The rock could give way at any moment. Workers hung suspended, drilling into spaces where one mistake
04:27meant death. But they did it because Borglum believed in them, because they'd come too far to quit.
04:33For fourteen years, the work continued. Through scorching summers and brutal winters, through the
04:38depression when money dried up, through political battles and public skepticism, Borglum aged before
04:44everyone's eyes, his obsession consuming him, his health failing, but his vision never wavering.
04:50He had bigger plans. The presidents were supposed to be carved down to their waist. Behind them,
04:55he designed a grand hall of records, a secret chamber that would house America's most important
05:00documents. Work had just begun when World War II erupted. Money for monuments evaporated. Young
05:06men who might have climbed those steps were boarding ships to fight overseas. On March 6,
05:121941, Goodson Borglum died from complications after surgery. He was 73 years old. His son,
05:20Lincoln Borglum, tried continuing the work. But seven months later, funding ran out completely.
05:26The tools fell silent. Mount Rushmore would remain forever unfinished. But those unfinished
05:31faces accomplished exactly what they were meant to accomplish. South Dakota wasn't invisible anymore.
05:38America had a new symbol, carved not by artists and studios, but by ordinary men with extraordinary
05:43courage during the most difficult period in American history. Stand before Mount Rushmore today,
05:48and you're not just looking at four presidents. You're looking at the determination of 400 workers
05:53who risked everything for 50 cents an hour. You're looking at Borglum's impossible dream,
05:59cut short but never defeated. Mount Rushmore isn't just a sculpture. It's a testament to men who believe
06:05that even during the darkest times, it's worth building something that will outlast us all.
06:09What impossible dream would you risk everything to build?
Comments