In September 1986 I took a driving trip out West to visit friends in Montana, and one of my stops was Mount Rushmore. It was a beautiful clear sunny morning, and it was my luck that I arrived at the same time as the yearly inspection of the statues--I have some neat pictures of rock climbers hanging off Roosevelt's lower lip! Anyway, I watched the orientation video in the visitor center, which explained how the idea for the statues came about, the reasons for the selection of these four Presidents, and how the faces were carved. After all these years, I identified the name of this video program and found a VHS copy (also available in DVD from the Mount Rushmore Society) and put it on the IMDb.
If you never get a chance to visit the actual monument, I can recommend this video as the next best thing.
Something I have not yet figured out: I distinctly remember Tom Brokaw (the NBC News anchor) narrating the video, and several Web sites back me up. But my VHS copy has another narrator, Bill Rogers. Perhaps there is a special alternate version just for the visitor center, I don't know.
If you never get a chance to visit the actual monument, I can recommend this video as the next best thing.
Something I have not yet figured out: I distinctly remember Tom Brokaw (the NBC News anchor) narrating the video, and several Web sites back me up. But my VHS copy has another narrator, Bill Rogers. Perhaps there is a special alternate version just for the visitor center, I don't know.
