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
Solon Borglum "The Stampede of Wild Horses", which were shown at the Paris Salon in 1898 and 1899, respectively. The year 1903 was a banner one for the artist. He had a one-man show of thirty-two small sculptures at the Keppel Gallery, New York. In his ground-breaking "History of American Sculpture" published that year, Lorado Taft devoted several pages to Borglum, and he was the subject of an entire chapter in Charles Caffin’s 1903 book "American Masters of Sculpture". In 1904 Borglum won the gold medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis. Borglum received several major public commissions, including