A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore

Journalist Davis (When Things Get Dark) offers a nuanced history of “our most visible piece of Americana,” the 60-foot-tall faces of four presidents carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota. Drawing on archival sources, his own travels, and interviews with locals, Davis pegs Mt. Rushmore’s story as one of disputed claims and hidden origins—from the bloody slaughter of the Indigenous people who inhabited the site, to the shadowy past of its sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. A KKK supporter, Borglum was recruited in 1927 because of his work on a Confederate monument in Stone Mountain, Ga.—which, unbeknownst to Rushmore’s backers, Borglum had been fired from. (In a twist of reader expectations, he refused to participate in a scheme to embezzle Stone Mountain’s federal funding for the KKK.) Likewise amorphous was Rushmore’s intended meaning—its mastermind, historian Doane Robinson, clearly envisioned it as a monument to the frontier, with early iterations including likenesses of Red Cloud and George Custer. While that meaning was obscured by the choice to carve U.S. presidents, the intention remains like a dark undercurrent, Davis astutely shows, with examples of how Rushmore continues to be a flash point between white and Native residents (like South Dakota governor Kristi Noem’s recent attempts to reinstate fireworks at the monument despite Native opposition). It’s a diligent effort to present a fuller representation of a murky past. (Nov.)