In the finale of our Mount Rushmore series, Mount Rushmore National Memorial gets finished. But the final product isn’t quite what Gutzon Borglum envisioned. The presidents aren’t sculpted down to their waists. There is no entablature. There is no true hall of records. There isn’t a message, written in three languages, in the hope that it’ll one day become Rosetta Stone 2: Electric Boogaloo.

And yet? It’s there! Despite the odds, four 60-foot tall faces of iconic American presidents are carved into a stolen, sacred mountain. Every year, millions of tourists make the trek to take a look.

So… how do we feel about that? Welp, as Normie C likes to say, “two things can be true!” It’s awful and awesome, beautiful and hideous, exciting and saddening.

The book, “The Carving of Mount Rushmore,” by Rex Alan Smith

The documentary, “Mount Rushmore”

“The Sordid History of Mount Rushmore,” by Matthew Shaer for Smithsonian Magazine

“Biography: Gutzon Borglum,” PBS.org

“The heartbreaking, controversial history of Mount Rushmore,” by Amy McKeever for National Geographic

“Why Native Americans Have Protested Mount Rushmore,” by Jodi Rave for History.com

“Are treaties perpetual? United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians,” by Reid Benson for teachingamericanhistory.org

The video, “The dark history of Mount Rushmore,” for TedEd.com

“BIOGRAPHY: Native Americans and Mount Rushmore,” PBS.org

“United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

“Who speaks for Crazy Horse,” by Brooke Jarvis for The New Yorker

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