SHRINE OF DEMOCRACY
(Mount Rushmore) SOLD OUT

“I want somewhere in America…a few feet of stone that bears witness…of the great things we accomplished as a nation, placed so high it won’t pay to pull down for lesser purposes.”

So wrote Gutzon Borglum, creator of the Shrine of Democracy, representing America’s heroic leadership in dimensions that stagger the imagination. The head of each president, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, is more than 60 feet high with eyes 11 feet wide. Each man would stand 465 feet tall if fully sculpted.

Begun in 1927 in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and completed after Borglum’s death (1941) by his son Lincoln, the monument was cut from Mount Rushmore’s granite cliff with drills and dynamite. At 5,725 feet above sea level, the heads rise 500 feet above the valley; thus the memorial stands taller than the Great Pyramid of Egypt.

“Tell them I’m making Roosevelt’s glasses out of the most precious thing on earth---imagination!” GUTZON BORGLUM

Click American Landmarks ARCHIVE for complete list of all Ray Day sculptures created for Lilliput Lane and Enesco