The Secret Chamber Behind Mount Rushmore
There’s a place behind Mount Rushmore that few really know exists. It’s a room called the Hall of Records, and it was the idea of the monument’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum.
Borglum didn’t want to stop by carving the four presidents that are Mount Rushmore. He envisioned a large, carved inscription beside the presidents that would list the nine most important events from 1776 to 1906 inside an outline of the shape of the Louisiana Purchase. But that plan didn’t work out because the text would have been too small to be read from a distance, and the section of the mountain where he wanted to do it was needed for the Lincoln head carving.
So he came up with an alternate idea that consisted of a large room carved into the mountain that would store America’s most important documents. The vault was designed to be 80 by 100 feet with an 800-foot granite stairway to get to the room. The entrance to the room was placed in a small canyon behind the presidents’ heads of Mount Rushmore.
The vault was intended to store the most important documents in the history of the United States, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a list of contributions the…
