Doane Robinson

The idea of carving a mountain in South Dakota belonged to a state historian who wanted a reason for motorists to stop. Doane Robinson, superintendent of the State Historical Society, put it bluntly: tourists soon get fed up on scenery unless it has something of special interest connected with it. The Needles Highway had opened these granite spires to cars in 1922, and by the end of 1923 Robinson was proposing that the spires themselves be carved with figures of the West. The names that recur in accounts of what he wanted are Lewis and Clark, the Oglala leader Red Cloud, and Buffalo Bill Cody. He wrote to Gutzon Borglum, then at work on Stone Mountain in Georgia, on 20 August 1924, and Borglum wired back eight days later that he was very much interested and that the North would welcome it. Borglum came out that September, returned the following August, and refused the Needles: the pillars were too thin, too weathered and too poor in granite to carry a face. He is quoted as saying that figures on those granite spikes would only look like misplaced totem poles. He also argued that the subjects ought to be national rather than regional, which is how a plan for western heroes on a rank of spires became four presidents on a mountain to the east. Robinson's proposal had already drawn objection from Lakota people and from the editor of the Hot Springs Star.