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