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
Gutzon Borglum Rushmore project, 1927–1941, was the brainchild of South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson. His first attempt with the face of Thomas Jefferson was blown up after two years. Dynamite was also used to remove large areas of rock from under Washington's brow. The initial pair of presidents, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson was soon joined by Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Ivan Houser, father of John Sherrill Houser, was assistant sculptor to Gutzon Borglum in the early years of carving; he began working with Borglum shortly after the inception of the monument and was with Borglum for a total of