Not every Dakotan welcomed Doane Robinson's idea to invite Gutzon Borglum to carve Mount Rushmore into sculpture. A professor at the University of South Dakota, John Tjaden, wrote a poem about the project which was published in local newspapers in 1926:

When God made our matchless playground,
He did not intend that man should
even in his wildest ravings
dare to come with hammer, chisel,
block and tackle, pick and mallet,
to profane His age-old record,
to profane the face of Rushmore
by his puny, pygmy scratches.

Why should man presume to alter
the Creator's masterpieces,
wrought in everlasting granite,
wrought by forces so titanic
that no scientist can measure,
that no human mind can master?
And to think that man, presumptive,
should deface and mutilate them!

Men and women, 'tis your duty
to lift up your earnest voices,
to the end that all our people
forthwith band themselves together
to preserve from desecration
finished products from God's workshop
and placed by that Master-Artist
in the playground of Dakota.

From Smith, Rex Alan. The Carving of Mount Rushmore. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985, pp. 116-7.