Carving the iconic Mount Rushmore


In all, the work consisted of six and a half years of actual carving by hundreds of workers, who used dynamite, jackhammers, chisels, and drills to shape the massive stone sculpture assemblage.Borglum’s technique involved blasting away much of the rock with explosives, drilling a large number of closely spaced holes, and then chipping the remaining rock away until the surface was smooth.