Who was the principal sculptor of Mount Rushmore?

Gutzon Borglum was the principal sculptor of Mount Rushmore.

Borglum directed the carving of the monumental South Dakota sculpture from 1927 until his death in 1941. The memorial features the heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln carved into Mount Rushmore’s granite face.

South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson first promoted the idea of a mountain monument to attract tourism. Borglum developed the design into a national memorial focused on major figures in American history. Workers used drilling, blasting, and carving techniques to shape the granite.

Borglum died before the project was fully finished. His son, Lincoln Borglum, helped oversee the final work and later served as the memorial’s first superintendent. The monument was not simply carved by hand with traditional chisels; most of the large-scale excavation used controlled dynamite blasting followed by detailed finishing.