On this day in 1937, as part of the nation's 150th celebration of the United States' founding document, sculptor Gutzon Borglum dedicated the head of President Abraham Lincoln, the third president to be carved out of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
While George Washington was chosen to signify the struggle for independence and the birth of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson the territorial expansion of the young country, and Theodore Roosevelt the rights of the common man and the central role of the United States in world affairs in the 20th century, Abraham Lincoln was selected due to his firm commitment to both a permanent union of the states and equality for all Americans.
"Let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and the rain alone shall wear the away."
- Gutzon Borglum