Doane Robinson

Fact not in the book.  Like all public art, it is the collaboration of many and in the case of Mount Rushmore, an idea of one.  Around 1924, State historian, Doane Robinson had dreamed of a tourist attraction to bring visitors to South Dakota.  He thought  a  heroic sculpture of Wild West figures.  Doane had many sculptors in mind, but at the time Gutzon was getting much publicity in the press about walking away from carving  Stone Mountain in Georgia.  Pissed off, Gutzon had thrown the model off the mountain and made it impossible for anyone else to finish the carving.  A war of words between Gutzon and the Stone Mountain Comission filled the papers.  Doane saw it and wrote to Gutzon about the job.

Fact in the book:  Lincoln accompanied his Dad on the first trip to South Dakota to look into the job.  It was Gutzon who brought up carving the Presidents.