Over 400 people worked on Mount Rushmore during from October 1927 to October 1941. Despite the extreme working conditions, nobody died during the monument's creation. By comparison, 112 people lost their lives building Hover Dam, making it the most haunted national monument in the continental United States.

It was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, who was 60 years old when carving began. He also has five sculptures on the US Senate in Washington, DC. He died just months before the formal dedication. That has to sting a little, given the fourteen years he spent on the sculpture.

Seven years were spent actually carving the monument. The other seven years were spent on weather delays and funding problems. Government and Mother Nature. Co-conspirators. No wonder Borglum checked out before completion.

The monument cost 900,000 old-timey 1940s dollars. A renovation completed in 1998 cost 56 million 20th century dollars.

The mountain was named long before the monument was even conceived. It was named for Charles E. Rushmore, a New York lawyer who investigated mining claims in the Black Hills in 1885.

The bill to authorize the monument was defeated twice before finally passing through the South Dakota State Senate.

The monument is in South Dakota. As are the Black Hills. That's one of those things you can never remember and always have to look up. Because - unless you live in North Dakota or South Dakota - they occupy precisely the same spot in your brain.

Wall Drug? Mt. Rushmore? That's SD. Geographic center of North America? Three ton turtle? That's ND.

If the monument spontaneously came to life, the scale of the carving would make the founding fathers 465 feet tall monsters.

800,000,000 pounds of stone were removed from the mountain. That's 36,363,637 kilograms. That's way less impressive in metric.

One of the original sponsors of the monument was a Congressman named William Williamson. That's ridiculous.

All fun facts have been discovered on the web, in books and by playing trivia games.
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