Ends of the Earth Club Ends of the Earth Club The Ends of the Earth Club was a group of artists and explorers founded in 1903. Its members included Mark Twain, General John Pershing, Admiral Robert Peary, Gutzon Borglum (the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore), Herbert Adams Gibbons (a Princeton professor and journalist), and more than 100 other prominent businessmen and academics located, primarily, in the northeastern United States. The group's honorary president was the British adventurer and writer, Rudyard Kipling. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the group held an annual dinner at the Savoy Hotel in New York, where its members
Needles (Black Hills) location was rejected by the sculptor Gutzon Borglum owing to the poor quality of the granite and the fact that they were too thin to support the sculptures. The Needles attract approximately 300,000 people annually. The area has a rich history of bold climbing by greatest climbers of their era, and has long been known for its purist ethics. In 1936 Fritz Wiessner climbed the "Totem Pole" and in 1937 "Khayyam Spire" with Bill House and Lawrence Coveney. In 1947 Jan and Herb Conn moved to the area and over the next couple decades put up over 220 first ascents.