Who was the principal sculptor of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota?

Gutzon Borglum was the principal sculptor of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. He directed the project that carved the heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln into the granite of the Black Hills.

Work began in 1927 after South Dakota historian Doane Robinson promoted a major mountain sculpture to attract tourism. Borglum developed the presidential design and supervised the engineering, surveying, and carving until his death in March 1941.

The monument was not completed exactly as initially envisioned. Borglum had hoped to include larger portions of the figures and additional inscriptions, but funding, weather, technical limits, and his death brought the work to an end. His son, Lincoln Borglum, helped oversee the final phase.

Mount Rushmore is a federal memorial rather than a national park. The site also has a complicated history involving the Black Hills, which the United States had promised to the Lakota in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie before taking the land after the 1870s gold rush.