Stone Mountain

Gutzon Borglum received the commission to carve Stone Mountain in 1915. After working for nearly 2 years, Borglum’s relationship with his bosses at The Stone Mountain Monumental Association soured, and his work was blasted off the mountain. Borglum would go on to carve Mount Rushmore.

Augustus Lukeman toiled for 3 years as Stone Mountain’s second sculptor, managing to carve Robert E. Lee’s head and part of his torso before the coffers ran dry and the Great Depression stalled the project. So, after 5 years of physical labor by 2 different sculptors, Stone Mountain was still incomplete, the eyes of Robert E. Lee staring blankly north for 3 decades.

In 1958, the Georgia General Assembly acquired Stone Mountain and the land around it and moved forward on a new Stone Mountain monument plan. Nine world-famous sculptors offered their plans and the committee settled on Walker Kirkland Hancock, a Massachusetts teacher and sculptor. Hancock and his chief carving artist, Roy Faulkner, worked on the monument from 1964 up to its finishing touches in 1972.

Mount Rushmore is named after Charles E. Rushmore, a lawyer from New York City. In his years as a young attorney, Rushmore traveled to South Dakota to survey recently discovered tin mines. During this time in South Dakota, Rushmore befriended a group of prospectors and asked them what the hills were called. They told him the hill he pointed out had no given name, but they would now call it Rushmore Peak.