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Keystone, South Dakota

Borglum's model of the Hall of Records. Borglum had a vision of creating a protected, secure area to house the "original", historical documents from the founding American democracy in a vault he planned to blast into the mountain. The documents would have included such heavy-hitters as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, a brief history of the United States, biographies of each of the presidents, etc.

He envisioned Mount Rushmore would stand the test of time, even after the USA was long gone. The vault would be useful resource to future civilizations as a means of preserving a tidbit of our country's history. Geeze, seems Borglum was preparing for WWIII. The vault was never finished. Workers tunneled nearly 70 feet horizontal feet into the granite before government funding ran out in 1939.

Model of an eye. Strange, the pupil is a raised block of sorts, just like what you see on Mount Rushmore.

Pictures of their on-going carving activities. Interesting factoid, Borglum originally put Jefferson on the left side of Washington but had to halt the carving mid-way through because he hit the black rock I mentioned earlier.