Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2: Our colleague Noel is on an adventure, but will be
Speaker 2: returning shortly.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan, the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know now, Uh, Matt Dylan,
Speaker 3: Have you guys ever visited the Black Hills or what
Speaker 3: we call Mount Rushmore today?
Speaker 4: Nay, I have not, Have you, I have not.
Speaker 3: It's something that honestly, I've been conflicted about visiting over
Speaker 3: the decades because you know, there's this ongoing controversy which
Speaker 3: we'll get into about Mount Rushmore. And when we're talking
Speaker 3: about Mount Rushmore, really it's a National Park site, but
Speaker 3: we're usually going to be referring to the gigantic sculpture
Speaker 3: out there in the Black Hills region of South Dakota.
Speaker 3: It's one of the most iconic landmarks in all of
Speaker 3: the United States. You know, recognized internationally right up there
Speaker 3: with the Statue of Liberty, And every so often since
Speaker 3: this thing was constructed, a president from one party or
Speaker 3: another will tacitly start to feel out the vibe and
Speaker 3: see if they can get their face added onto it.
Speaker 4: Oh sick. I mean there's room.
Speaker 2: There's that little nook in between two of the faces
Speaker 2: where you could clearly put somebody in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could, but should you? You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's always recently been funny because there were moves for
Speaker 3: President Barack Obama to have his face put on there,
Speaker 3: and they were also people were floating the idea of
Speaker 3: putting President Donald Trump's face on there, and in both
Speaker 3: of those cases, well, in the most recent case, the
Speaker 3: president said, you know a lot of people are saying this, yeah,
Speaker 3: trying to make it look like it wasn't their idea.
Speaker 4: Let's go whacky with it.
Speaker 2: Let's like, let's put prints up there, and then future
Speaker 2: historians will be like, who was that guy? Yeah, because,
Speaker 2: as we'll find out later in this episode, there's some
Speaker 2: documentation about who these guys are for future generations, future extraterrestrials.
Speaker 4: But maybe we just threw prints or somebody like that
Speaker 4: up there.
Speaker 3: You know what, why limit it to human beings? I
Speaker 3: would like I would like something further inexplicable, like just
Speaker 3: a huge crew or a wacky meme. Let's let's start
Speaker 3: making memes in stone, which I guess is how how
Speaker 3: memes really began.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that would really make sense for the way things
Speaker 2: have been going if we just put some kind of
Speaker 2: stonk meme up there, you know, or whatever, just some
Speaker 2: kind of and it would make a lot of sense
Speaker 2: for how things have been going. Just to put some
Speaker 2: kind of ridiculous internet meme up there. Yeah, we kind
Speaker 2: of started like that, but end it over here.
Speaker 3: Classic human right, because we have to remember that one
Speaker 3: of the oldest instances of writing that's been discovered. Basically,
Speaker 3: I think this is right. It basically translates to Wagner
Speaker 3: was here. It's graffiti, So I could I could see that.
Speaker 3: I could definitely see putting a little more humor in
Speaker 3: these monuments. Mount Rushmore is mentioned constantly in film and fiction.
Speaker 3: Are you guys fans of the National Treasure franchise the
Speaker 3: Nicholas CAGEV Vehicle?
Speaker 4: I am aware of it.
Speaker 3: I enjoy it.
Speaker 5: I've never seen it. I feel like it's a movie night.
Speaker 3: It might be a movie night. It's definitely one you'll
Speaker 3: want some popcorn for.
Speaker 2: Can we do some Dan Brown and National Treasure stuff
Speaker 2: like in one night?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so. I think it's apropos. Get all
Speaker 3: that Indiana Jones adjacent stuff knocked out. And we also
Speaker 3: know something for our purposes tonight, Mount Rushmore. Get this, folks,
Speaker 3: it has a secret. So in tonight's episode we're getting
Speaker 3: into some weird, ridiculous history of the site. Here are
Speaker 3: the facts, all right, we'll say it this way. Pardon
Speaker 3: our pronunciation. Long long before the arrival of the Europeans,
Speaker 3: the Plains tribes in what we call the Black Hills
Speaker 3: or Paha Sappa, they revered the area that is now
Speaker 3: called Mount Rushmore. They called it Tonka si La soakpe Paha,
Speaker 3: which translates to the six Grandfathers. It's a pretty cool name.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it refers to I guess some deities in the
Speaker 2: culture there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, embodiments of the six directions. And I hadn't
Speaker 3: thought of this idea of six directions. But the way
Speaker 3: they process it is northeast, southwest and then above and below.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, it's a sacred site, and so over millennia,
Speaker 3: visiting there was often considered a spiritual journey, kind of
Speaker 3: like taking a pilgrimage. You know, it's not a place
Speaker 3: where you leave your trash. We also know in eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty eight, the US government signed a treaty with the Sioux,
Speaker 3: the Lakota Sioux, in particular, promising the following. They said,
Speaker 3: all right, you and your community will have exclusive rights
Speaker 3: across the Black Hills. You'll have the right to use
Speaker 3: the land you run it. It's up to you. We're
Speaker 3: going to stay out of your business, including the sacred
Speaker 3: six Grandfather's site. This is called the eighteen sixty eight
Speaker 3: Treaty of Fort Laramie. And spoiler, it didn't work out
Speaker 3: super great Matt when General George Custer, you know that
Speaker 3: one Custer's last stand guy, when he reached the top
Speaker 3: of Black Elk Peak in eighteen seventy four during the
Speaker 3: Black Hills Expedition. The American expansion here triggered a massive
Speaker 3: resource rush, which also triggered the Great Sioux War of
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy six. And that this is kind of like
Speaker 3: a dark version of that children's book. If you give
Speaker 3: him alse a cookie. Do you remember that one? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So you give these expansions for sys some gold. It
Speaker 3: leads to a war, and then that leads just a
Speaker 3: year later to the US breaking their treaty, their treaty
Speaker 3: with the native population that is not even a decade old.
Speaker 3: They just said, nah, forget it. They took control of
Speaker 3: the land, and then they opened it up to this deluge,
Speaker 3: this massive influx of settlers and prospectors, who, to the
Speaker 3: Native community obviously are invaders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Just watching a
Speaker 2: video William shatnher as our head. I think it was
Speaker 2: on the History Channel, and it was talking about American monuments,
Speaker 2: and it really kind of sugarcoated some of the Founding
Speaker 2: Fathers and Founding Forces relationships with like the Iroquois tribe
Speaker 2: and Lakota Tribe and some of these tribes out here,
Speaker 2: where you're just like, uh, these obviously aren't the Founding
Speaker 2: Fathers in eighteen seventy six were well over one hundred
Speaker 2: years away from that time. But it's still just hearing
Speaker 2: it talked about how much how much integration there was
Speaker 2: during the some of the processes to create the United States,
Speaker 2: like the Iroquois tribe was in the room while they
Speaker 2: were making doing some of these things, and it painted
Speaker 2: it as well. It was important for you know, the
Speaker 2: colonies to have good relationships with the Iroquois and other
Speaker 2: tribes because fifty percent of their trading was done with
Speaker 2: these tribes. And yeah, I don't know, just think about
Speaker 2: it in that way, at least early on and then
Speaker 2: knowing the rest of history and what was done, and
Speaker 2: now jumping you know, one hundred years later just to
Speaker 2: see that, Oh, it just took some golds and resources
Speaker 2: to start an entire war after everything was pretty great.
Speaker 3: Right well, after making so many promises right on the look.
Speaker 3: At the time this treaty came about too before was
Speaker 3: before it was broken back in eighteen sixty eight. The
Speaker 3: indigenous people in the area already knew that the United
Speaker 3: States had a terrible track record with treaties, and so
Speaker 3: they were continually choosing the path of peace, which is
Speaker 3: an ethical and noble thing to do, and they continually
Speaker 3: ran into volkes acting like snakes, just untrustworthy. So one
Speaker 3: of these people who is very interested in the gold
Speaker 3: rush in the Black Hills at this time, he's a
Speaker 3: New York mining man. He's a guy named James Wilson.
Speaker 3: He has mining interest and he's pretty well to do.
Speaker 3: And I personally love hearing these kind of things where
Speaker 3: somebody's doing so well or they're a big time investor,
Speaker 3: and when you ask them what they do, they don't
Speaker 3: say investment. They just say, oh, I'm in water, you
Speaker 3: know what do you mean?
Speaker 4: Like mostly ten?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a ten man, yes, quite literally. Yeah. He
Speaker 3: founds the Harney Peak ten Mining Company and through this
Speaker 3: he purchases rights to areas of the Black Hills, which,
Speaker 3: of course, again the play tribes don't vibe with this
Speaker 3: because the people who are selling it don't own it.
Speaker 3: So our buddy James is all the way out on
Speaker 3: the East coast, so he's pretty much buying this sight unseen.
Speaker 3: And as a result, he teams up with a fellow
Speaker 3: New Yorker, a wealthy lawyer and investor named Charles Rushmore.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, I get it now, Yes, right, I guess
Speaker 4: that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he goes, Charlie, look, we have spent
Speaker 3: in a bunch of money on this. We gotta get
Speaker 3: some boots on the ground, and he goes, very well,
Speaker 3: I'll travel out west light out for the territories. So
Speaker 3: Charles has the means and the motivation to visit this
Speaker 3: land that the Harney peaked In Mining Company has quote
Speaker 3: unquote purchased, and over the course of two years he
Speaker 3: travels there multiple times. Some sources say three trips, other
Speaker 3: sources say four. But it's a long way, you know,
Speaker 3: this is before the interstate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not a leisurely trip, not a quick trip,
Speaker 2: not a trip you probably want to take unless you're
Speaker 2: you know, you've got some good motivation.
Speaker 4: And in this case, I guess it's as you said, tin.
Speaker 2: There's lots of good tin out there, I suppose. But again,
Speaker 2: you know, when you when you see images of this area,
Speaker 2: and like us, you've not been there yet, it looks
Speaker 2: incredibly majestic, the surrounding area, the Black Hills themselves, it's incredible.
Speaker 2: So it must have been cool, I guess to make
Speaker 2: that hard trip, though. Is he really just staking it
Speaker 2: out to see what what have we purchased?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to get a sense of what well, to
Speaker 3: confirm that they're the resources they want are there, right,
Speaker 3: because otherwise it's just been a series of correspondencies. Here's
Speaker 3: the origin story for the name for the transformation from
Speaker 3: six Grandfathers to Rushmore. Apparently, like anybody else, Charlie is
Speaker 3: impressed when he sees the natural six Grandfather's site, and
Speaker 3: he asked his guide, a non native named Bill Challice, hey,
Speaker 3: what's this mountain? And Bill doesn't know, so he, apparently
Speaker 3: in a flash of daring to you an inspiration, said
Speaker 3: something like, well, it doesn't have a name, mister Rushmore,
Speaker 3: so why don't we just name it after you? And
Speaker 3: Rushmore said tight, yea, something to that effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really cool to go online to be
Speaker 2: able to see a few old photographs of this mountain
Speaker 2: before it was carved. Yes, you can see that, and
Speaker 2: it is neat because when you look up at it,
Speaker 2: it does the thing clouds do often where your mind
Speaker 2: starts to just create shapes, the same thing a rorshach
Speaker 2: test ink blot would do, or depending on your lens
Speaker 2: and your your background and experience, you're gonna maybe put
Speaker 2: some of those lines and shapes together to form something.
Speaker 4: So you can imagine someone.
Speaker 2: Putting together Oh, I can imagine faces up there, like
Speaker 2: huge faces, but it is weird to then look at
Speaker 2: how large the faces are compared to these giant mountains.
Speaker 2: You know, the faces are kind of small actually when
Speaker 2: you look at them from afar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like stone Mountain, which will also show up here.
Speaker 3: And that phenomenon we're describing the fancy word for his paradolia.
Speaker 3: That's the where you're seeing patterns in clouds. That's one
Speaker 3: of my favorite things. And when you know, you see
Speaker 3: things that look like faces, maybe on Mars, who knows.
Speaker 2: But again you might see something completely different than the
Speaker 2: person standing next.
Speaker 4: To you, which is yes, I think my favorite part.
Speaker 3: Right, someone says, hey, uh, look at that cloud. Doesn't
Speaker 3: that look like a duck? And then the person next
Speaker 3: to him says, it's clearly a nineteen eighty seven Subaru. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But you can, by describing what you're seeing, get another
Speaker 2: person to see what you're seeing, which is again just
Speaker 2: using that old noggin and some persuasion techniques and just communicating.
Speaker 2: It's weird how we can do that for each other
Speaker 2: and to each other, hmm yeah, and with each other.
Speaker 3: And so similar to that phenomenon, the name starts spreading
Speaker 3: the name Mount Rushmore. The non native locals are the
Speaker 3: only ones using it, and they're partially using it because
Speaker 3: people you know like patterns, people like having names for things,
Speaker 3: and partially because they didn't give a tinker's dam for
Speaker 3: the values of the indigenous cultures in the area. It's
Speaker 3: not until nineteen thirty that Uncle Sam makes this name
Speaker 3: Mount Rushmore a fish, and a lot more happened in
Speaker 3: between them. Most notably as referred to, Mount Rushmore became
Speaker 3: home to four gigantic sixty foot sculptures of US presidents.
Speaker 3: It ignited a new era of conflict between Native peoples
Speaker 3: and the US government that continues today, which is weird
Speaker 3: because Mount Rushmore is a huge tourist attraction, even now
Speaker 3: when tourism in the US is plummeted from domestic and
Speaker 3: international sources.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is one of those places that it's fabled
Speaker 2: because you read about it as soon as you've got
Speaker 2: a textbook in front of you that talks about the
Speaker 2: history of the United States, as soon as you're a child.
Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore is a thing, and I think you create
Speaker 2: a picture of it in your mind from maybe the
Speaker 2: pictures in that textbook of what this thing is, and
Speaker 2: going out to see it, I want to say, becomes
Speaker 2: some kind of I don't know, a journey. You're maybe
Speaker 2: supposed to you feel like you're supposed to take at
Speaker 2: some point, kind of like going to the National Mall,
Speaker 2: seeing you know, the Washington Monument and Congress and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. For the first time, it feels like it's
Speaker 2: a pilgrimage you're supposed to do as an.
Speaker 3: American, Right, Yeah, it's and that's an echo of the
Speaker 3: pilgrimage or spiritual journeys indigenous communities felt for thousands of
Speaker 3: years before the United States, so we can understand why. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I've got a big picture of Mount Rushmore on one
Speaker 3: of these monitors, and I just now I feel like
Speaker 3: these three of these four guys are staring at me.
Speaker 3: There is one guy's just looking off to a different direction.
Speaker 3: I don't know what he's looking at.
Speaker 4: It's an interesting choice.
Speaker 3: We'll see. It's partially due to the geography.
Speaker 2: But that's Lincoln right on the like if you're looking
Speaker 2: at it on the far right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Lincoln on the far right. On the far left,
Speaker 3: we've got George Washington from earlier. Second to left, we've
Speaker 3: got Thomas Jefferson, and then in the middle, just looking
Speaker 3: in a weirdly intimate way towards is Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: Yes, and somebody, some unknown is meant to be here
Speaker 2: right there.
Speaker 4: Right there between them.
Speaker 3: So while this is a huge tourist attraction, and for
Speaker 3: many patriotic Americans it's seen as a rite of passage
Speaker 3: to visit it, it's also a center of controversy and conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Apparently Mount Rushmore is home to some secrets. So what
Speaker 3: say we pause for a word from our sponsors and
Speaker 3: then climb up the mountain.
Speaker 4: Let's glide.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy, all right. I can't remember
Speaker 3: if we've talked about this guy too often on the podcast.
Speaker 3: I know we've mentioned him on some show or another.
Speaker 3: But Gutsan Borglum, Gutsan Borglum.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, lots of things going on in that name. Yes,
Speaker 2: in particular, I'm here borg, very strong borg.
Speaker 4: Gutsan. Though, where's this gentleman from.
Speaker 3: He is from Idaho, the son of a Danish immigrant.
Speaker 3: His full name is John Gutsan de la Mote Borglum.
Speaker 3: And what I love about the name Gutsan is maybe
Speaker 3: because of the z it feels like you have to
Speaker 3: yell it. It feels like you the only way to
Speaker 3: say is Gutsan, like Gaston and Gutsan, Gutsan you or
Speaker 3: this is going to crack up our girlfriends, by the way,
Speaker 3: because they're just randomly hearing one side of this conversation
Speaker 3: is where yelling gutsan anyway, yeah, Gutsan. Borglum is super
Speaker 3: into a couple of things. One of those is making
Speaker 3: enormous sculptures and the other is the ku klux.
Speaker 4: Klan oh oh okay.
Speaker 3: Through the twist at the end. He's a networker, he's
Speaker 3: an artist, he's a traveler. He studies in Europe. He's
Speaker 3: got he's got a really big personality. He makes a
Speaker 3: lot of connections and he hops around from you know,
Speaker 3: like a year in Spain, a couple of years in Paris,
Speaker 3: stop by America, go somewhere else. I'm living in England.
Speaker 3: His personal relationships take a toll from the constant travel,
Speaker 3: but he does make plenty of very powerful friends and enemies.
Speaker 3: He exhibits his art that he's creating all along the way,
Speaker 3: and his two most well known works are Mount Rushmore
Speaker 3: and Stone Mountain. Now Stone Mountain. I know, Matt, you
Speaker 3: and I have been, Dylan, have you been to Stone Mountain.
Speaker 5: I've been to the park, but I've never been to
Speaker 5: see the sculptures in Confederate actually laser light show, I forgot, yes,
Speaker 5: I was going on fire and during the fireworks finale.
Speaker 3: I remember. It's weird because a lot of us see
Speaker 3: the Stone Mountain laser show in this area when you know,
Speaker 3: it's a thing that parents take their children to, right,
Speaker 3: so the kids often don't know the entire story. You
Speaker 3: just see what, for the time is a really cool
Speaker 3: light show with bangers like Devil went down to Georgia,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And they're passing out the
Speaker 3: little light bracelets. They got all these glow and the
Speaker 3: dark toys. And during that show you get a big
Speaker 3: vague dose of patriotism, but you don't get much of
Speaker 3: an education.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you don't really understand the significance of the
Speaker 2: guys that are depicting on horses up there again, a
Speaker 2: huge sculpture of these Confederate generals, let's name them, Jefferson, Davis,
Speaker 2: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and the horses.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: And I mean it looks very majestic when you see
Speaker 2: it if you just are seeing it as oh, a
Speaker 2: carving of humans on horses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is cool.
Speaker 4: And then you go, oh, oh wait, what what is this?
Speaker 4: Why are we what?
Speaker 3: And that's why there have been a lot of moves
Speaker 3: over the decades or proposals to to alter or remove
Speaker 3: those carvings. You know, one of I think one of
Speaker 3: our mutual favorites was a petition to replace those Confederate
Speaker 3: leaders with outcast I didn't think what actually happened, but
Speaker 3: people did sign the petition.
Speaker 4: That would be nuts.
Speaker 3: That would be nuts. It'd be very expensive too, right,
Speaker 3: because the scale is baffling for both of these things.
Speaker 3: When you look at Stone Mountain from far away, you
Speaker 3: can appreciate that there definitely is a size at play.
Speaker 3: But I guess the best microcosmic example is have you
Speaker 3: ever actually held a traffic light? They've seen them on
Speaker 3: the ground.
Speaker 2: I have held a very old traffic light that was
Speaker 2: of different dimensions and not as heavy or large.
Speaker 3: Okay, but you know what I'm saying, Like with the
Speaker 3: modern traffic lights, when you see them and they're removed
Speaker 3: from wherever they're hanging, once you get closer to them,
Speaker 3: you can see how large they actually are. And that's
Speaker 3: what happens. As you get closer to these sculptures, it
Speaker 3: takes a lot of work to make these This is
Speaker 3: not clay after all, And so Borglum is constantly on
Speaker 3: this rush for funding for support for various organizations to
Speaker 3: help them out.
Speaker 2: Oh and that's another thing to keep in mind here. Sometimes,
Speaker 2: and I have done this. You imagine a soul artist
Speaker 2: making a sculpture, right, if you imagine Michelangelo or somebody
Speaker 2: who's just sculpting away at a piece of grantite, a
Speaker 2: piece of stone, that is not possible for the size
Speaker 2: of these things. So when we're talking about searching for funding,
Speaker 2: you're talking about teams of people that are working in
Speaker 2: shifts that are you know, procuring dynamite and specialized tools,
Speaker 2: and just it takes a crapload of money to make
Speaker 2: something like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, like how Hoover didn't build the dam.
Speaker 4: Yes, precisely.
Speaker 3: I love that point because Borglum. Yeah, let us not
Speaker 3: deify the guy or lionize him too much. Borglum has
Speaker 3: the vision. He's making these models, but he is not
Speaker 3: up there by himself with a pickaxe. Yeah, but you can.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't mean, maybe I'm just a dullard in that way,
Speaker 2: but I just you know, especially as a kid. You imagine, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's somebody's sculpture, like somebody did did that rather than
Speaker 2: somebody play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we should say someone had the vision for it.
Speaker 3: That's but I think that's a really great point, Matt.
Speaker 3: Because this guy has these strange connections across the world,
Speaker 3: and because he has this penchant for enormous problematic sculptures,
Speaker 3: it's not surprising that Borglam has become the subject of
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories. The most well known one directly inspired that
Speaker 3: National Treasure movie. I think we can spoil it. We
Speaker 3: just it's two thousand and seven, right, Yeah, we'll do
Speaker 3: a spoiler warning. Okay, here be spoilers three to one.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Dylan and Matt.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean it's still it's it's a popcorn flick, right,
Speaker 3: it's beat for beat, similar to Indiana Jones right, or
Speaker 3: meets Dan Brown. So there's a treasure hunter named Ben Gates,
Speaker 3: and Nicholas Cage is so famous that whenever somebody describes
Speaker 3: the movie, they say, oh, Nick Cage is hunting treasure,
Speaker 3: but his name in the show is Ben Gates. He
Speaker 3: learns that Calvin Coolidge. I don't want to spoil it
Speaker 3: too too much, but Calvin Coolidge commissioned Gutsan Borglum to
Speaker 3: create the gigantic Mount Rushmore sculpture as a way of
Speaker 3: hiding evidence of a legendary Native American pre Columbian city
Speaker 3: of Gold.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: What I love about the mcguffin of this, without getting
Speaker 3: too into it, is the idea of creating an entire
Speaker 3: creating Mount Rushmore to hide a treasure.
Speaker 4: It's brilliant, man, it's brilliant.
Speaker 3: Not the fastest solution, I.
Speaker 5: Mean, it's a documentary. What's false about any of that.
Speaker 3: We have to go, guys, we have to go to
Speaker 3: the Black Hills.
Speaker 2: I want to. I mean, look, just let's put it
Speaker 2: out there. From a strategy perspective, if there's a giant
Speaker 2: monument on the side of a mountain that becomes a
Speaker 2: tourist attraction and a piece of American fable, American history, sure,
Speaker 2: then nobody's gonna be checking around Lincoln's head, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. And nobody's gonna be looking over there.
Speaker 4: They're just looking at Lincoln's face.
Speaker 3: I guess. So we're probably not the best sample size
Speaker 3: because I would be like right in it knows, I
Speaker 3: would be trying to figure out you know how big
Speaker 3: this sculpture is, and like, could I set up a
Speaker 3: little tent here?
Speaker 4: Well, that's why they have all the security. There's a
Speaker 4: ton of security there, yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, partially because of that controversy and partially because of
Speaker 3: very eccentric things like me, who would immediately try to
Speaker 3: camp out. You know who else would try to camp
Speaker 3: on it? Alex Williams, Oh, yeah, for sure, a million percent.
Speaker 3: So the security is there for a reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dan and his son from What's Inside might try
Speaker 2: and do that. Watched your video, guys, good work.
Speaker 3: So the answer is, yes, there is a little bit
Speaker 3: of truth to the legend, but there's not a secret
Speaker 3: complex network of tunnels crisscrossing the interior of the Six Grandfathers.
Speaker 3: But there is a chamber in the mountain that was,
Speaker 3: once upon a time kind of a secret to the public.
Speaker 3: It is right behind the head of Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 2: Super cool, Yes, should we state that? The National Park
Speaker 2: Service says it's a not so secret place, right, And
Speaker 2: yet I was unaware of it until we began researching
Speaker 2: this episode, So I don't know, it seems pretty secret.
Speaker 3: It was secret for a while, not necessarily due to malevolence,
Speaker 3: but more due to the well, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3: So here's the truth of it. Like so many other
Speaker 3: works of a grand scope. Think of the Washington Monument.
Speaker 3: That's a great example. Borglum's original plans for Rushmore were
Speaker 3: way way more grandiose than what actually ended up being built.
Speaker 3: And this guy was very much a consummate salesman. He
Speaker 3: was always pitching stuff, and for example, he wanted you
Speaker 3: can see pictures of this on Reddit and Snopes or wherever.
Speaker 3: In his original vision, the presidents were even bigger. They
Speaker 3: were depicted from the waist up, not just the heads.
Speaker 3: And then he said, guys, this isn't just a sculpture,
Speaker 3: you know, when he's asking for more money. This is
Speaker 3: going to be a National Archives here in the mountains,
Speaker 3: a second National Archives. There's going to be this opulent
Speaker 3: stairway behind the presidents. It ushers visitors up to a
Speaker 3: hall of records. And they said hall of records, and
Speaker 3: he said, no, say it so I can hear the
Speaker 3: Capitol letters. It was a really big deal to him.
Speaker 3: This was like, out of all the stuff that he
Speaker 3: was passionate about for this project, this vaunted Hall of
Speaker 3: Records was to him one of the most important parts
Speaker 3: of the whole shebang. It was, it was why he
Speaker 3: woke up to do it?
Speaker 2: Well, it's it makes so much sense when we're talking
Speaker 2: about a grandiose vision. Will We'll give you the quote,
Speaker 2: a really cool quote at the end of the show here.
Speaker 2: But this concept that these stones, when we go about
Speaker 2: carving them right in depictions, whether it's from the waist
Speaker 2: up or the neck up or whatever, they're going to
Speaker 2: be around for a long long time. And without putting
Speaker 2: some kind of explanation. People in forty thousand years, fifty
Speaker 2: thousand years, even if it's not people someone else coming
Speaker 2: isn't going to know what the heck this is, who
Speaker 2: these people are, why this was done. It'll be like
Speaker 2: the Sphinx, where we're all going, I guess it's this, right,
Speaker 2: Why not put something in his mind at least, Why
Speaker 2: not put something that at least gives some context if
Speaker 2: that group can figure out how to read.
Speaker 3: English, right, Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker 3: We know he's inspired two things. First, we know he
Speaker 3: was massively inspired by the Pyramids and the stories of
Speaker 3: the Colossus of Rhodes. Secondly, it would have been epically
Speaker 3: hilarious if instead of waist up. He was like, it's
Speaker 3: the president's, but waist down, and you have to guess
Speaker 3: which president based on their crotches.
Speaker 4: It's just their shoes.
Speaker 3: I gotta stop staring at this picture of these guys.
Speaker 3: It's freaking me out anyway. So this idea, it's a
Speaker 3: man made cave. It's going to be eight thousand square
Speaker 3: feet or little more than seven hundred and forty square meters.
Speaker 3: And he talks about this so frequently, you guys, and
Speaker 3: every time he talks about it, the plan seems to
Speaker 3: grow more elaborate. I'd love to throw to our Alma matter,
Speaker 3: our pals at how stuff works, who have a great
Speaker 3: primary source description of his final articulation of what he
Speaker 3: wants the Hall of Records to be.
Speaker 2: The Hall of Records, as he called it, would have
Speaker 2: a twenty foot entrance with glass doors and a bronze
Speaker 2: eagle stretching fifteen feet from talons to crest above it,
Speaker 2: along with the motto America marches on to provide access
Speaker 2: to the hall. Borgland plan to carve an eight hundred
Speaker 2: foot granite stairway up the backside of Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 3: I love. I was into it until they said, backside up,
Speaker 3: the backside up, the backside as well, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: Can we pause here just for a moment. Just you
Speaker 2: mentioned Washington Monument and how there are other plans for it.
Speaker 2: I think maybe a lot of people don't know the
Speaker 2: full story of that. If I'm recalling our previous videos
Speaker 2: and discussions of that. The huge singular obelisk that is
Speaker 2: now the Washington Monument that we've come to love and
Speaker 2: know it originally had this really cool other part to it, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the first Washington well, there were two Washington monuments, right,
Speaker 3: and the first was it looks kind of like a
Speaker 3: stone milk bottle. It's not super duper impressive, but it's
Speaker 3: still you know, it's still phallic, which I guess is
Speaker 3: the point.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but the one they got approved, right, had a.
Speaker 3: Rotunda, yeah, rotunda, and it had this elaborate it was
Speaker 3: gonna have this elaborate sculpture atop it with Washington and
Speaker 3: the boys riding hard for freedom. It was gonna have
Speaker 3: all kinds of cool stuff on the inside, and then
Speaker 3: some engravings and artifacts and whatnot, and then it ended
Speaker 3: up being a monument, you know, just the obelisk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was gonna be.
Speaker 2: Wasn't it going to be like a hall of the
Speaker 2: Founding Father's kind of thing where it's much smaller sculptures
Speaker 2: than Mount Rushmore's, but just like actual sculptures of the
Speaker 2: Founding Fathers around that thing. But like, what do we
Speaker 2: when we do the episode? We compared it to a pantheon.
Speaker 3: I think, yes, yeah, it's because it was very much
Speaker 3: descended from classical Greek architecture, so they wanted to echo
Speaker 3: the kind of things you would see at an old
Speaker 3: Grecian temple.
Speaker 4: But of course, of war came along while all the.
Speaker 2: Money was going into this monument, and they said, maybe
Speaker 2: we'll put a pause on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, before we make a thing. I don't mean sounding
Speaker 3: a jerk about this, but they rightly said, before we
Speaker 3: make a thing kissing our countries, but let's save the
Speaker 3: actual country.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 3: Cool, cool, you know what I mean. It's like, why
Speaker 3: would you make T shirts for the band until before
Speaker 3: you make a song?
Speaker 4: Anyway, that's probably a good idea.
Speaker 3: We love making T shirt So anyway, Borglain wanted this hall,
Speaker 3: as you can tell from the description, folks, Borla wanted
Speaker 3: this hall to really blow people away. And I love
Speaker 3: your point about making a legacy, something set in stone
Speaker 3: so that thousands of years after its construction people can
Speaker 3: have that osomandious moment, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, didn't he want to have the documents, like
Speaker 2: the Founding Documents, Constitution, things like that, actually etched into
Speaker 2: the stone there, or at least to be a repository
Speaker 2: to keep them there.
Speaker 4: Yes, the original versions.
Speaker 3: He wanted original versions. He would accept early replicas of
Speaker 3: things like it's tough to get a hold of the Constitution,
Speaker 3: so he'd need an early replica of that. He wanted
Speaker 3: smaller bust of various famous Americans. And this was happening.
Speaker 3: His ideation about this was happening when they were still
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what faces they would put on
Speaker 3: the monument. There were a lot of things floated, not
Speaker 3: all of them were presidents. Saka Juweya was a pitch,
Speaker 3: as was Lewis and Clark, and they and I guess
Speaker 3: maybe Coolidge at some point. Anyway, they landed on these
Speaker 3: four presidents, and they took all the people that they
Speaker 3: considered important but not you know, mountain face important. They
Speaker 3: would make little bust of them and put them in
Speaker 3: the Hall of Records along with a bunch of exhibits
Speaker 3: that were showcasing the industrial, artistic, and scientific breakthroughs of
Speaker 3: people from the US and US history because Borglum wanted to,
Speaker 3: at least from his statements that we have, he wanted
Speaker 3: to create art and legacies that were thoroughly American and
Speaker 3: he was not interested in the opinions of the Native people. Ah,
Speaker 3: because America meant a very certain thing to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder Frederick Douglass was on that short list
Speaker 2: of people to put in there.
Speaker 3: I from what we know about Borglum, Yeah, if he
Speaker 3: was on the list, Yeah, I don't think Borgolam put
Speaker 3: them there.
Speaker 4: Just one of the most important figures. Whatever.
Speaker 3: It's fine, sure, sure, Okay, So he's super in love
Speaker 3: with this idea. We all know how collaboration and envisioning
Speaker 3: stuff works, and especially if you're working on a big
Speaker 3: project with a group, a lot of people fall in
Speaker 3: love with like their one thing, their pet thing, and
Speaker 3: for him, the pet thing is the Hall of Records.
Speaker 3: Construction on Rushmore begins on October fourth, nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 3: and it takes fourteen years to complete. It concludes on
Speaker 3: October thirty first, nineteen forty one. There are a lot
Speaker 3: of obstacles, a lot of setbacks funding, of course, geology,
Speaker 3: the sheer scope of the thing, and as as you
Speaker 3: foreshadowed so beautifully, Matt, war, World War two kind of
Speaker 3: complicates things. Yeah, yeah, and fourteen years isn't that bad
Speaker 3: for the size of these sculptures?
Speaker 2: Yeah, fourteen years. Come on, when you really think about
Speaker 2: the amount, like the way it was done. You can
Speaker 2: go to a couple of different videos that you can
Speaker 2: actually see, like inside where cameras are allowed to go
Speaker 2: inside the Hall of Records or what what.
Speaker 4: Is the Hall of what would.
Speaker 2: Have been the Hall of Records, right, And you can
Speaker 2: look at the boreholes. There are just so many of
Speaker 2: them where you know, you'd honeycomb these giant pieces of
Speaker 2: granite as deep as these drills could go and then
Speaker 2: stuff them full of dynamite and blast them out. And
Speaker 2: just how long that took and how dangerous that was
Speaker 2: to do? Oh yeah, you can imagine that, you know,
Speaker 2: fourteen years not too.
Speaker 3: Shabby, not too shabby. No, And you can look at
Speaker 3: other similar projects to get a sense of how great
Speaker 3: fourteen years actually is for something of this size. Let's
Speaker 3: go to nineteen thirty eight, though, all right, the construction
Speaker 3: has been going on for more than a decade. People
Speaker 3: are getting a little antsy, but Gutsal is not giving
Speaker 3: up on the dream of this this interior thing going
Speaker 3: quote up the backside of I'm sorry of the monument. So,
Speaker 3: like you're saying, Matt, they blast out a seventy foot
Speaker 3: tunnel and things are looking pretty good, right the boreholes
Speaker 3: you can see similar similar techniques used when roads are
Speaker 3: being carved through mountains in Appalachia. You know, you can
Speaker 3: drive through an area and you can look at the
Speaker 3: rock face and you'll literally see those holes you're describing
Speaker 3: where they had to blow out chunks of the of
Speaker 3: the rock.
Speaker 2: You can also see it in a lot of mines,
Speaker 2: especially if you're up in North Georgia and places along
Speaker 2: Appalachian mountains, Like when you go down in there, you
Speaker 2: see where there were huge mining operations. Hey, like the
Speaker 2: like maybe the tin mining those going out there where
Speaker 2: it's so such a dangerous concept of using fire for
Speaker 2: light or you know, at some point electricity that's run
Speaker 2: all the way through a mine to then.
Speaker 4: Put all this really.
Speaker 2: Volatile chemical stuff dynamite into those holes and then just
Speaker 2: try and explode it without blowing yourself and everyone else up,
Speaker 2: or you know, caving everyone.
Speaker 3: In asphyxiating, hoping above all that you've got the timing
Speaker 3: right and the support beams are having a good day
Speaker 3: because you're.
Speaker 4: Literally spooling out the fuse.
Speaker 3: Yourself exactly and you're counting back. Oh man, but this
Speaker 3: is you know, it's why you say that. One thing
Speaker 3: that I think we've all visited in the past is, oh,
Speaker 3: what is it in Chattanoogads, Not Rock City. It's the
Speaker 3: underground waterfall.
Speaker 4: Ruby Ruby, Ruby Falls.
Speaker 3: Baby, Yeah, Ruby Falls is getting a little stuck up
Speaker 3: for me. Guys. Last time we went up there with
Speaker 3: a we learned you have to have reservations for your tickets.
Speaker 4: Now, Oh, it's so crowded.
Speaker 3: I thought it was one of those things where you
Speaker 3: could just go up and say, take me to the cave.
Speaker 3: But the I'm mentioning that because going underground, even in
Speaker 3: a tourist attraction that's very safe, gives you a sense
Speaker 3: of the claustrophobia and the dangerous conditions in which these
Speaker 3: these mines are made. It also be really cool to
Speaker 3: hear from you, fellow conspiracy realist, about abandoned mines in
Speaker 3: your neck of the woods. I'm thinking especially out west
Speaker 3: in the United States, the odds are pretty high that
Speaker 3: several minds have been lost to history. It'd be cool
Speaker 3: to find them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you find a shaft. Accidentally, that's the worst a.
Speaker 3: Mind shaft, because those go down. I guess all minds
Speaker 3: go down.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I can't get the picture out of my mind.
Speaker 4: Or maybe maybe it's just the phrase.
Speaker 2: It's echoing this concept of Gutsan's never ending pursuit to
Speaker 2: penetrate the backside of the monument.
Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah, I hope that's the phrase. He
Speaker 3: keeps using. Were the stairs and he goes, I'm glad
Speaker 3: you asked all right up the backside, Like, oh, do
Speaker 3: you not want to have maybe a nicer entrance in
Speaker 3: the front. He's like, no backside or nothing. So it's crazy.
Speaker 3: We're allowed to vote. Guys.
Speaker 2: Hey, don't sleep on the Consolidated gold Mine in Delanaga.
Speaker 4: That's another great place.
Speaker 3: I love. I like that one too. That's a lot
Speaker 3: of fun for adults and kids alike. Did you have
Speaker 3: you been there recently? Do the panting thing? Do they
Speaker 3: still do that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: They still do panning thing.
Speaker 2: The most interesting thing to me is that it's a
Speaker 2: mine that's still filled with gold. There are there's a
Speaker 2: ton of gold in that mine, but nobody's allowed to
Speaker 2: do any work there or pull any of the gold out,
Speaker 2: which is interesting.
Speaker 3: I remember reading that. Can you remind me why aren't they?
Speaker 3: Is it because it's a historical site or is it
Speaker 3: too expensive?
Speaker 2: I can't remember exactly, but there's a great spiel the kids.
Speaker 2: I got to take the kids up there, and they
Speaker 2: just had a lot of fun learning about the history
Speaker 2: of it and actually seeing like veins of gold.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's neat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, shout out to every kid who
Speaker 3: is that's another sort of Georgia Right of Passage or
Speaker 3: Atlanta area right of passage. Shout out to every kid
Speaker 3: who's been there, because I know we all thought at
Speaker 3: some point it'll be your lucky day. Right, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be the kid who pulls out a huge nugget of gold.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Now I want to go back anyway, all right,
Speaker 3: So thieves a look at golden for our pal Borglum.
Speaker 3: They blast out that tunnel. But in July of the
Speaker 3: very next year, in nineteen thirty nine, Congress says, come on,
Speaker 3: my god, this is taking forever. This is so non
Speaker 3: falcon of you, non falcon Can you just focus on
Speaker 3: the actual sculpture? And Borglum reluctantly says, we'll put a
Speaker 3: pin in it, and that's what we'll do, with a
Speaker 3: brief pause for a word from our sponsors. All right, So, yes,
Speaker 3: we verified there is a chamber. Secret is up for debate.
Speaker 3: It's not really secret now, and it's not some super
Speaker 3: duper ancient civilization thing. It's not a crazy opulent hideaway
Speaker 3: or doomsday bunker for the well to do. It's really
Speaker 3: a remnant of a big dream gone awry, was languishing
Speaker 3: in obscurity. It was a whole yeah, technically right, but
Speaker 3: it was an empty one or no records, no public acknowledgment. Borglum,
Speaker 3: as history shows never saw Rushmore completed because he passed
Speaker 3: away in nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was cool because his family got to
Speaker 2: take up the mantle a little bit and his son
Speaker 2: was named Lincoln little hey, Lincoln, come on, that's pretty odd.
Speaker 4: Wait ooh, it's interesting. They want to have the Hall
Speaker 4: of Records right by Lincoln's head.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, names his son Lincoln, all right, what's going
Speaker 2: on with his interest in Lincoln.
Speaker 4: Okay, we need to know more, but it is really
Speaker 4: cool that it.
Speaker 2: Went to his family because you can see old archival
Speaker 2: images and some that's not that old actually, where it's
Speaker 2: the family saying, hey, we need to get this thing done.
Speaker 4: We need to finish this.
Speaker 2: This was his vision. We can do it. We just
Speaker 2: need the funding exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And unfortunately, tragedy at this point comes in waves,
Speaker 3: and later that same year, nineteen forty one, the funding
Speaker 3: for Rushmore to your point runs dry. Congress is worried
Speaker 3: about a Second World War, so they refused to throw
Speaker 3: more money at the construction, the problems of the construction,
Speaker 3: and over the next several decades, like you were saying,
Speaker 3: Borglum's Estate campaigns to get this sculpture finished. And at
Speaker 3: the same time, concurrently, the site is attracting more and
Speaker 3: more tourists and it's growing in popularity despite the ongoing
Speaker 3: controversy surrounding Native American rights. So if it hadn't become
Speaker 3: a very popular tourist attraction, then the funding probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: have arrived, at least not the amount that they needed.
Speaker 3: So Borglum's Estate was eventually able to say not just say, hey,
Speaker 3: this was important to our patriarch. They were able to
Speaker 3: say this is important to America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now we can get it done. Now we can
Speaker 2: get it done. So the National Park Service, which is
Speaker 2: so cool. I mean, we shout them out every time
Speaker 2: we talk about anything that has to do with this,
Speaker 2: and you know, they've had a lot of their fund
Speaker 2: and cut and a lot of problems going on right now.
Speaker 2: But the human beings, and I think more importantly, the
Speaker 2: whatever it is inside somebody that says I'm gonna work
Speaker 2: for the National Park Service and I'm gonna do this
Speaker 2: thing and provide basically history lessons and nature experiences to
Speaker 2: other human beings. That's pretty cool. That's a I don't know,
Speaker 2: that's a neat pursuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love all the specific jobs and roles in
Speaker 3: the Park Service. Sometimes I'll go into a rabbit hole
Speaker 3: of just watching the videos of the fire watchers. It
Speaker 3: seems like such an awesome life.
Speaker 4: Well all of it is.
Speaker 2: And you go to any of these sites and you
Speaker 2: just talk to the people that are there every day
Speaker 2: that are just running it, and nature preserves people running
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff like that. Just awesome humans good. Seriously,
Speaker 2: if you do that work, good on you.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you very much, and we want to hang out. Also. Yes,
Speaker 3: we are unrepentant fanboys of the Park Service. And it's
Speaker 3: something I think a lot of us here in the
Speaker 3: United States take for granted. They're these vast swaths of
Speaker 3: just absolute natural beauty. And yeah, it can be inconvenient
Speaker 3: to get out to some of those places, but we
Speaker 3: promise it's worth it, especially while they're still around. As
Speaker 3: depressing as that is to say.
Speaker 2: Well, especially if you're even remotely going to somewhere that's
Speaker 2: near one, just make a day of it.
Speaker 3: I love it. And here's what the MPs does. At
Speaker 3: this point in the story, the Borglum family. It's getting
Speaker 3: tougher for us to keep saying Borglam. They get their
Speaker 3: wish in nineteen ninety eight, but they don't get it
Speaker 3: necessary the way that their patriarch wanted. The Park Service says,
Speaker 3: all right, we're gonna do our best to do something.
Speaker 3: We don't have the funding, No are the other resources
Speaker 3: to build this gigantic hall. You might have to forget
Speaker 3: about the bronze egle for now, but we're gonna get
Speaker 3: these sixteen enamel porcelain tablets, and these tablets have information
Speaker 3: on the president, the various US presidents, information on the Constitution,
Speaker 3: the Bill of Rights, all the hits, and then it'll
Speaker 3: have an explanation of how Mount Rushmore was constructed. And
Speaker 3: we're gonna put it in a big box made out
Speaker 3: of teak, and the family goes okay, and you go, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we're not done. We're gonna take that box and we're
Speaker 3: gonna put it in another box, and that one's gonna
Speaker 3: be titanium, and they're like, okay, and then they say
Speaker 3: and then we're gonna take that that box with the
Speaker 3: box inside of it, and we're going to drill a
Speaker 3: hole in the floor of what would have been the
Speaker 3: Hall of Records, and then we're gonna put a granite
Speaker 3: capstone on top of that. And the family's like, so
Speaker 3: the stuff will be there, but people can't read it
Speaker 3: or see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's not about that, man, It's not about
Speaker 2: people going there and reading the stuff. You can go
Speaker 2: down to the visitor center down more Black Mount Center.
Speaker 2: You can learn about all that. This what we're doing
Speaker 2: here is for fifty thousand years from now, is for
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty thousand years from now, because and
Speaker 2: it's so brilliant, that teak box.
Speaker 4: You can see videos of it. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: It is a gorgeous wooden piece of art, and then
Speaker 2: these huge you know, it's it's tough to even imagine.
Speaker 2: I couldn't see it on my head until I watch
Speaker 2: video of them actually placing it into the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The box is really I'm trying to imagine something to
Speaker 2: compare it to, like if you're imagine a packing box
Speaker 2: or something that you may have received, and I can't
Speaker 2: think of something that'll be universal enough to just.
Speaker 3: Like in ikea flat pack box maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So if you imagine putting one
Speaker 2: end of that deep down into the earth, and then
Speaker 2: imagine putting these large tablets, sliding them into that very slowly,
Speaker 2: long ways.
Speaker 4: It was really cool to watch.
Speaker 2: Them actually do it and to see how it's situated
Speaker 2: under that capstone. I just didn't in my head. I
Speaker 2: didn't see it that way when I saw a capstone,
Speaker 2: not until I saw them putting it in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Because when we hear the word box, we're
Speaker 3: all kind of you're naturally going to think of something square, right,
Speaker 3: and this is not the case. So if we're back
Speaker 3: of our hypothetical pitch meeting with the Borglum family, they're saying,
Speaker 3: they're still saying, nobody know what this is. You put
Speaker 3: it in there, but you can't read it, And they go, ah,
Speaker 3: but wait, we will put one of your old man's
Speaker 3: quotes right on that granite capstone. Objectively decades later, now
Speaker 3: we can say it is a very cool quotation.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's it's inspiring, and it makes the whole
Speaker 2: thing makes sense. It makes the vision makes sense that
Speaker 2: Borglum had originally ben why don't you hit us with it.
Speaker 3: Let us place there, carved high as close to heaven
Speaker 3: as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces,
Speaker 3: to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then
Speaker 3: breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the
Speaker 3: wind and rain alone shall.
Speaker 4: Wear them away. It's poetic, bro, it's poetic.
Speaker 3: He's very problematic person. Yeah again, like a huge fan
Speaker 3: of the ku Klux Klan. So I've just like we
Speaker 3: got to mitigate the poetry here. It's objectively a cool quote.
Speaker 3: Bad people say cool things all the time.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that I just wanted to remark on the
Speaker 2: complexity of each each of us as an individual. And
Speaker 2: it's fascinating that you can have something like that, just
Speaker 2: a thought like that, build something like that, or envision
Speaker 2: something like that, and then also hold beliefs that are
Speaker 2: just so contrary to the bigger picture things that he's
Speaker 2: making monuments for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also being closely affiliated with the Klan while
Speaker 3: clearly of loving Abraham Lincoln. That's another contradiction. And you know, look,
Speaker 3: members of the Borglombs state and family are live today
Speaker 3: and maybe listening to this show, and we're being honest
Speaker 3: about the history of a complex character. But we're not
Speaker 3: in any way, I think, denigrating the ambition there. You know,
Speaker 3: we just have to acknowledge that imperfect people can make
Speaker 3: amazing things, and that Mount Rushmore, love it or hate it,
Speaker 3: is still incredibly controversial in the Native community. I mean,
Speaker 3: there is a chamber hidden in Rushmore. It's not really
Speaker 3: a secret now. It's definitely not what Good saw and envisioned,
Speaker 3: and there have been all these plans and propositions for
Speaker 3: adding to it or erasing it, as some Native groups
Speaker 3: would prefer. Tell you what. I don't know, if we
Speaker 3: have time, there is one funny uh one funny Borglam story.
Speaker 3: We collected it here at the bottom. I can't. I
Speaker 3: think we talked about a little bit on ridiculous history,
Speaker 3: but we said he's a big salesman, right. He sabotaged
Speaker 3: Calvin Coolidge on his vacation to kind of trick him
Speaker 3: into going to a dedication ceremony for Mount Rushmore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: He said. He was thinking, you know, if I can
Speaker 3: get a presidential visit, I'll get so much publicity. We
Speaker 3: know the President's going to go to the Black Hills
Speaker 3: this summer, and Borglam said he was going to hold
Speaker 3: a dedication ceremony at that same time. Never mind that
Speaker 3: he had already had a dedication ceremony back in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty five. That doesn't matter. So he scheduled the event before.
Speaker 3: He asked Coolidge if he could make it, because it
Speaker 3: didn't occur to him that the president would be doing
Speaker 3: other stuff. And he had this idea where he was
Speaker 3: going to hire a pilot to fly him over the
Speaker 3: lodge where Coolidge was staying and then throw a big
Speaker 3: a bunch of flowers or a big wreath and say
Speaker 3: greed aids for about Rushmore it's about Coolidge. It did work,
Speaker 3: by the way, eventually he I guess he badgered Coolidge
Speaker 3: into going to the dedication ceremony. But the road to
Speaker 3: Rushmore was really muddy and rough. On the day of
Speaker 3: the ceremony, the cars got stuck, so Coolidge had to
Speaker 3: ride up there on horseback in his president business suit,
Speaker 3: and everybody went crazy because they thought it was on purpose.
Speaker 3: So sometimes Borglum's highly ambitious schemes would work out.
Speaker 2: So he attacked the president with flowers he had.
Speaker 3: He didn't see it as attacking, Okay, he thought it
Speaker 3: would be you know, dashing, maybe a bit dally esque,
Speaker 3: very American, right, using aviation. He wanted to make an impression,
Speaker 3: and he did on Coolidge as well as on the
Speaker 3: six Grandfathers.
Speaker 2: I am glad that some of the protections that are
Speaker 2: in place now weren't in place then, because he would
Speaker 2: have been shot out of the sky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I know we're looking a little into the security.
Speaker 3: Is it tighter every year or are we talking like
Speaker 3: drone coverage or what are we talking?
Speaker 4: Well, I don't, I just know.
Speaker 2: Look at this point, if you had you know, a
Speaker 2: small plane coming at any president, you know from I
Speaker 2: don't know nineteen eighty.
Speaker 4: Four on Oh yeah, there would have been issues. There
Speaker 4: would have been issues with that plane.
Speaker 3: One hundred and if you survived that encounter and you
Speaker 3: were app which probably wouldn't. If you survived that encounter,
Speaker 3: then they would not be amused if you said, well,
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm a little scamp. You know, I'm just
Speaker 3: trying to get.
Speaker 4: Him to come to my dedication ceremony.
Speaker 3: I want to see if he can go to the party,
Speaker 3: you guys can come too. I don't think that works
Speaker 3: in court, your honor. I plead that the party was
Speaker 3: dope and that you can come to That's a weird
Speaker 3: nolo contendre. So we're gonna leave it here for now.
Speaker 3: I think we've got so much more weird stuff about Borglum,
Speaker 3: who I think is a character that fascinates all three
Speaker 3: of us and hopefully you as well. We want to
Speaker 3: know your opinions, folks. If you visited the side, if
Speaker 3: you lived in the area, how do you feel when
Speaker 3: you see it? What would you like done with the
Speaker 3: six grandfathers? You can tell us your thoughts. We can't
Speaker 3: wait to hear from you. You can find us online
Speaker 3: YouTube all the social media, should thou sip You can
Speaker 3: also give us a phone call.
Speaker 4: Yes you can, but before I tell you the phone number.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at a picture of Gutsan Borglum right now, Ben,
Speaker 2: and you know what I'm seeing. Only two similarities, But
Speaker 2: there are two similarities between you and him. He's got
Speaker 2: an epic hat like you have right now, and an
Speaker 2: even more epic mustache.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a wild one.
Speaker 4: That's all I'm saying. All right.
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