Post-presidency of George Washington 21, 1885. In 1923, historian Doane Robinson had developed an idea to make a gigantic sculpture on the Black Hills of South Dakota. Robinson hired renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum for the job. Borglum, at the time, was making a Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain. Borglum searched for a mountain suitable for his project and he found Mount Rushmore, composed of granite, named after a New York attorney Charles E. Rushmore. Four prominent presidents were chosen for the sculptor to bring national recognition, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Washington was chosen to represent a "light for
Gutzon Borglum and exhibiting in Europe. Borglum was trained in Paris at the Académie Julian, where he came to know Auguste Rodin and was influenced by Rodin's impressionistic light-catching surfaces. Borglum's works were accepted to the 1891 and the 1892 Paris Salons. In Paris, Elizabeth studied with Felix Hildago. Elizabeth took part in the 1892 Columbus Centennial Exhibition in Spain. A return trip to California proved to be ill-timed, as the state was in the throes of a financial depression. In 1893, they purchased a home, "El Rosario", in Sierra Madre, California. In 1896 Gutzon and Elizabeth went back to Europe, this