Borglum scouted out a location in the Black Hills called Mount Rushmore, named in 1885 for New York lawyer Charles E. Rushmore (Corbett, 31). Its broad wall of exposed granite faced southeast so that it could receive sunlight for most of the day. Borglum envisioned four U.S. presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Thoedore Roosevelt, and Lincoln, respectively from left to right, whom he thought stood for the ultimate representatives of the .
U.S. as a nation. The mountain is said to show American prosperity and the manner in which four of the greatest rulers of all time held themselves.
However, Percy may exist slanted to view the mountain as such an absolute representation. Percy would certainly argue that Borglum ruined the original mountain face of Mount Rushmore by carving images into it. The mountain once stood for a part of nature, but through the eyes of mankind, images were carved into it, ruining its value. Percy sums it up when he states, "to no one else is it ever as beautiful "except the rare man who manages to recover it, who knows that it has to be recovered."" (Percy, 597) How many tourists actually visit Mount Rushmore and imagine what the mountain looked like previous to the shaping of the presidential faces? Tourists view the mountain for how it exists, and therefore lose the initial value that it once had potential to hold.
Percy writes, "for him (the sightseer) there is .
no present; there is only the past of what has been formulated and seen and the future of what has been formulated and not seen. The present is surrendered to the past and the future."" (Percy, 598) Many people, for themselves, have never seen Mount Rushmore in person, but they do have a formulation in their minds from seeing pictures of the mountain on postcards, television, and from stories of family and friends who have vacationed there. They certainly have heard stories from their friends and family about how the mountain appeared and the tale of experiences shared there.
