Construction of Mount Rushmore Construction of Mount Rushmore The construction of Mount Rushmore National Memorial took 14 years, from 1927 to 1941. Doane Robinson of the South Dakota Historical Society wanted a monument to be built in South Dakota in order to help the economy of the state by attracting tourism. In 1923, he proposed that this monument should be built from the granite cliffs in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Senator Peter Norbeck of South Dakota approved the proposal, and federal funding helped the project. Robinson asked architect and sculptor Gutzon Borglum to sculpt and design the monument. Borglum decided to use
Gutzon Borglum art and music in Boston, New York, and Paris. Her marriage to J. W. Putnam ended in divorce. She taught music in Milwaulkee before moving to San Francisco in 1881, studying art at the School of Design under Virgil Williams and L. P. Latimer, moving to Los Angeles, California in 1884 and the next year began art study with William Keith. In 1885, she met Gutzon Borglum, who was also a student of Keith's. In 1889 in Los Angeles she married Borglum who was her pupil and 19 years younger. The Borglums spent the next ten years traveling widely, studying