Hidden room inside Mount Rushmore with message carved into door
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty Images / National Park Service
It's a site which has become synonymous with US national identity, containing the faces of four influential figures in the country's history, but there is more to Mount Rushmore than might first appear.
The sculpture was declared complete in 1941 - after years of setbacks - but there intention had been to create a hidden room in the mountain.
And no, this isn't to hide the headquarters of Team America.
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Mount Rushmore is in a place which is hugely important to the Lakota, with the site being called 'The Six Grandfathers' and sitting in the Black Hills.
Historian and member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe told National Geographic: “It’s the center of the universe of our people."
In 1868, a treaty was signed giving indigenous people exclusive rights to the land.
But this treaty didn't last long after gold was discovered in the region, with the US government breaking the treaty in 1877.
The idea of carving faces into a mountain in the US actually originated as a plan to carve depictions of Confederate leaders into Stone mountain.
Historian Doane Robinson learned of this in 1924, and launched a campaign to create a similar monument at Mount Rushmore, which ended up being George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson.
To create the monument, they enlisted the help of sculptor, Gutzon Borglum.
Borglum is known to have been involved with the Ku Klux Klan, attending Klan rallies and serving on its committees.
His original intent had been to carve an inscription into the base of the mountain, but when there was not enough space, he instead laid plans to create an archive inside the mountain.
This was never completed, but work blasting into the mountain did begin, with this being the hidden room. The work was declared 'complete' when Borglum died in 1941.
The message on the door is a quote by Borglum, and reads: "...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 rain alone shall wear them away."
In 1998, the National Parks Service placed a titanium vault into the room and filled it with information about Mount Rushmore, the presidents, and US history.
The room is not open to the public, and has become the subject of speculation and conspiracy.
The Lakota continue to campaign for the return of the land and have mounted numerous legal challenges.
Mount Rushmore has also become a focal point for campaigning around the historic and current treatment of indigenous communities in the US.
Campaigner Phil Two Eagle has suggested that the focus of the site be changed to emphasise the oppression of indigenous people.
He told The Guardian: “It should be turned into something like the United States Holocaust Museum.
“The world needs to know what was done to us.”