Where this was said
Borglum Arrives at Rushmore: Changing the Vision
At 43:21 · chapter starts 40:20
Once in South Dakota, Borglum wasted no time asserting control. Robinson had wanted the Needles as the location, but Borglum dismissed them as too thin and vertical. He hiked with Robinson to the top of the Black Hills — then called Harney Peak — surveyed the range, and identified the Six Grandfathers as the canvas. His declaration, as quoted by Davis from Borglum's own writings: 'Here is the place American history shall march on the skyline.' The irony is blunt — American history marching on someone else's sacred mountain. He also overruled Robinson's frontier characters, choosing four presidents instead. And crucially, he was explicit about his reasoning: his journal entry describes them as 'a group of empire makers — Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Washington was already a foregone conclusion,' connecting each to a phase of American imperial expansion.
Borglum's own journal describes the four presidents of Mount Rushmore as 'a group of empire makers,' connecting each to a phase of American expansion: Washington to founding, Jefferson to the Louisiana Purchase, Lincoln to preservation, and Roosevelt to the Panama Canal. This explicit imperial framing has been completely erased from the monument's official narrative.
