If you’re standing at the base of the Black Hills in South Dakota, looking up at those massive granite faces, it’s hard not to feel a bit small. Most people just snap a selfie, grab an overpriced huckleberry soda, and move on. But then the big question hits: how long did it take to construct Mount Rushmore?
Fourteen years.
That’s the short answer. From 1927 to 1941, workers were hanging off the side of a mountain with nothing but steel cables and a prayer. But if you think they were up there chipping away every single day for fourteen years, you’re mistaken. Honestly, the "active" work time was way shorter than the history books usually imply.
The Fourteen-Year Stretch That Wasn’t
The project officially kicked off on October 4, 1927. It "ended" on October 31, 1941. That sounds like a long, grueling marathon, right?
It wasn't.
If you subtract the constant delays caused by bad weather and, more importantly, the total lack of cash, the actual carving only took about six and a half years. Gutzon Borglum, the lead sculptor, spent half his time in Washington D.C. begging for money. He was a brilliant artist but a nightmare to work with—temperamental, stubborn, and constantly changing the design.
Imagine trying to build a skyscraper where the architect keeps changing the floor plan while the concrete is being poured. That was Rushmore.
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Money was the biggest hurdle. This was the Great Depression era. Federal funding didn't just flow like a river; it dripped like a leaky faucet. Every time the bank account hit zero, the drills stopped. The workers went back to their farms or other jobs. The mountain went silent.
Dynamite, Not Chisels
When people ask how long did it take to construct Mount Rushmore, they often imagine men with tiny hammers and chisels.
Nope.
Ninety percent of the mountain was carved with dynamite. They used a technique called "honeycombing." Workers would drill holes close together to a specific depth and then blast away the excess rock. It was precise work. If you used too much powder, you’d blow off Lincoln’s nose. If you used too little, you wasted a whole day.
After the blasting, they used "bumper tools"—basically pneumatic hammers—to smooth out the granite. It’s why the faces look so polished from a distance, even though they’re actually quite rough up close.
The Timeline of the Faces
- George Washington: He was the first. His face was dedicated in 1930. It took roughly three years to get him "presentable," though they kept tweaking him for years after.
- Thomas Jefferson: This was a disaster at first. Borglum originally started carving Jefferson to Washington’s right. After two years of work, they realized the stone was too soft and full of feldspar streaks. They had to blast Jefferson’s face off the mountain entirely and start over on the other side.
- Abraham Lincoln: Work started in 1937. Because he was on the far right, the rock was more stable, and his features were more defined.
- Theodore Roosevelt: He was the hardest. He’s set further back into the mountain, which meant carving deeper into the canyon. They dedicated him in 1939.
Why Did They Stop in 1941?
The original plan was much grander. Borglum didn't just want heads; he wanted the presidents carved down to their waists. He also wanted a massive "Hall of Records" hidden behind the faces to store America’s most important documents.
So, why did they stop?
Two reasons: Death and War.
Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941 following surgery. His son, Lincoln Borglum, took over the supervision, but the spark was gone. More importantly, the United States was on the brink of entering World War II. The government basically told the Borglums, "Look, we’ve got bigger problems than a giant stone library."
Funding was permanently pulled. The project was declared complete "as is" on October 31, 1941. If you look closely at the top of the heads today, you can see where the rock is still jagged and unfinished. It wasn't an artistic choice; they just ran out of time and bullets—literally, as the nation shifted to wartime production.
The Human Cost of the Fourteen Years
Around 400 people worked on the mountain during that fourteen-year window.
Here is the most insane fact about the construction: Zero people died.
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In an era with almost no OSHA regulations, where men were winched up 500 feet in bosun's chairs and handled high explosives daily, nobody fell. Nobody was blown up. It’s a statistical miracle.
However, many workers later suffered from silicosis. They were breathing in fine granite dust for years. While the construction itself didn't kill them on-site, the mountain stayed with them in their lungs for the rest of their lives.
What to Do If You’re Visiting Today
If you’re planning a trip to see how long it took to construct Mount Rushmore in person, don't just look at the faces and leave.
- Walk the Presidential Trail: It’s a half-mile loop that gets you much closer to the base. You’ll see the massive "talus" piles—the 450,000 tons of granite scrap they blasted off the mountain and just left there.
- Visit the Sculptor's Studio: You can see the 1/12th scale models Borglum used. It’s the only way to realize how much of the original vision was left on the cutting room floor.
- Check the lighting ceremony: Even if you think it's cheesy, seeing those faces hit with floodlights against a pitch-black South Dakota sky is something else.
The sheer scale of the project is hard to grasp until you realize that each nose is about 20 feet long. Fourteen years seems like a long time for a sculpture, but for a man-made mountain? It's a blink of an eye.
If you want to dive deeper into the engineering, check out the National Park Service archives or look into the work of Luigi Del Bianco. He was the chief carver—the guy who actually gave the faces their "soul"—though he didn't get much credit for it until decades later.
Understanding the timeline makes the monument feel less like a static hunk of rock and more like a messy, human struggle against gravity and poverty. It’s unfinished, it’s controversial to many, and it’s an engineering marvel that shouldn’t have worked, yet there it is.
Go see the talus piles. Look at the jagged tops of the heads. That's where the story actually lives.