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Mount Rushmore: Carved in Stone

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From deep within the Earth’s crust,
An orogeny pushes
The batholith upwards
To become “The Shrine of Democracy,”
Of weathered presidential faces
Chiseled in rock in South Dakota,
Representing 150 years of history
(From the birth of a nation
To its entry into the 20th century)
In carved images
Of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln.

An army of men labored fourteen years in the making,
Hanging from scaffolds and bosun’s chairs,
Using dynamite, jackhammers, chisels,
And air hammer brushes to smooth the edges,
Carving the sculptor Borglum’s masterpiece
(Plasticized model into a reality),
Sixty feet high, out of the granite outcrop.
Mount Rushmore upholds patriotic symbolism
In a constitution written to ensure existence
Of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
***

Notes:
1) Orogeny: An orogeny is a mountain creation due to plate tectonics.

2) Batholith (bathos-depth, lithos-rock): A batholith is a large mass of intrusive igneous rock formed by the cooling of lava or magma deep in the Earth’s crust. Through the process of orogeny (continental uplift) and erosion, it can become exposed at the Earth’s surface via outcrops.

3) Shrine of Democracy: "The purpose of the memorial is to communicate the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the United States with colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt." (Gutzon Borglum)

4) Presidents of the U.S.A. carved on Mount Rushmore:
George Washington (1732–1799), 1st. President: Birth of the United States of America.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), 3rd. President: Expansion of the U.S.A. with the Louisiana Purchase.
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), 16th. President: Preserver of the Union.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th. President: Development of the U.S.A.

5) Mount Rushmore: Mount Rushmore is located in the Black Hills, Keystone, South Dakota. Construction of the monument took place from 1927 to 1941 and is the work of the sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867–1941). Mount Rushmore is named after Charles E. Rushmore (1857–1931), a New York City attorney who was sent out to this area in 1884 to check legal titles on properties for a mining company, and in 1885 the name Mount Rushmore came into local usage. In 1930 the United States Board of Geographic Names officially recognized the name. The Lakota called it Tunkasila Sakpe Paha, or Six Grandfathers Mountain (before it was renamed).

6) Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is a phrase written into the United States Declaration of Independence (1776); “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…

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