Carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore are the heads of 4 presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
When you see the National Memorial in pictures you do not really get an understanding of the true enormity of the construction. Covering 5.17km₂, the granite sculpture, built to represent the first 130 years of the history of the United States was created by Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers over a 14 year period.
The original design of the monument was intended to show the presidents from head to waist but due to a lack of funding, the construction had to end in late 1941.
A little known fact about the sculpture is that directly behind it sits a chamber cut 21m into the rock. It contains a vault with sixteen porcelain panels. The panels include the text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This chamber was created as the entrance-way to a planned “Hall of Records.
