AA-2026-9AA8F7
On the image
Somewhere in the postwar American interior, a family pulled off U.S. Route 16A, someone stepped out of a station wagon, and this is the shot they got — four presidents framed between ponderosa pines, which is to say exactly the shot that two million other Americans were also getting that decade. Mount Rushmore was finished in 1941 after fourteen years of dynamiting a sacred Lakota mountain into the likeness of four men who would have been startled to see themselves there, and by the 1950s and 60s it had become the mandatory pilgrimage of the American road trip, the monument you drove fifteen hours across the Great Plains to stand in front of for twenty minutes. The composition here — presidents half-obscured by trees, talus slope piled beneath Lincoln's chin — is the accidental framing of someone who stopped at the roadside pullout rather than the official viewing terrace, which suggests either aesthetic instinct or a powerful reluctance to pay for parking. Gutzon Borglum chose Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln on the theory that they represented the nation's founding, expansion, industry, and preservation, a curatorial decision that has been generating arguments ever since, none of which are visible in the granite.
Visually related — by likeness
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Black Hills, South Dakota, mid-20th century. 1955–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-9AA8F7. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-black-hills-south-dakota-mid-20th-century.
@misc{aaAA20269AA8F7,
title = {Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Black Hills, South Dakota, mid-20th century},
year = {1955–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-9AA8F7},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-black-hills-south-dakota-mid-20th-century}
}TY - ART TI - Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Black Hills, South Dakota, mid-20th century PY - 1955–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-9AA8F7 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-black-hills-south-dakota-mid-20th-century ER -
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