World’s Biggest Face Lift Helps Rushmore Hide Age

Round, black markers dotted the stone faces of four U.S. presidents Thursday as a project got under way to develop a long-term maintenance plan for Mt. Rushmore.

National Park Service employees and workers from an engineering firm carefully positioned the markers on the 60-foot-tall granite faces so a photographer in a helicopter could take close-up pictures today of cracks that may threaten the structural integrity of the Shrine of Democracy.

“The ultimate purpose is so we can actually map those cracks and make models of the mountain and then analyze those models to determine what potential movement and instability is there,” said Dan Wenk, Mt. Rushmore superintendent.

The black markers, 15 inches around, will become reference marks in the photographs. The markers were to be be removed by the end of the day, Wenk said.

Bob Crisman of the National Park Service, who was suspended by a cable in front of the faces, stuck the markers on with an adhesive. A crew of surveyors was in radio contact from the Mt. Rushmore Visitors Center telling him where to place them.

Each fall, workers seal cracks in the faces with a mixture of granite dust, white lead and linseed oil to keep out water that would freeze and to lessen damage when cool weather makes the rock contract.

It was decided two years ago that a comprehensive examination of the popular tourist attraction and a maintenance plan was needed, Wenk said.

Monthly measurements since 1980 of a prominent crack on the forehead of George Washington’s likeness indicated the potential instability of the fissure, he said. A scientist projected that the crack would widen one-quarter of an inch every 200 years.

“There has been no discernable damage to the memorial to date, and this will allow us to make certain we can preserve it,” Wenk said.

A structural analysis of the portraits of Presidents Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, which were drilled and blasted into the mountainside in the Black Hills, should be done by next fall, Wenk said.

The faces are the largest carved figures anywhere. Washington’s face is as high as a five-story building, bigger than any sphinx in Egypt, and the monument can be seen for 60 miles.

Wenk said the estimated $350,000 cost of the project will be paid by the private Mt. Rushmore National Memorial Society. The non-profit group has served as a benefactor to the monument since 1930.

Work on Mt. Rushmore was begun in 1927 by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and was finished in 1941 by his son, Lincoln. The Black Hills memorial attracts about 2 million visitors a year.