2016-07-30 Sat

Gutzon Borglum was a great artist who sculpted Mount Rushmore and also designed the Stone Mountain commemorative half dollar. Almost 400 workers blasted 60-foot tall portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The monument was featured on half dollars, silver dollars and $5 gold pieces in 1991 to celebrate the memorial’s 50th anniversary. It also appeared on the 2004 South Dakota State quarter and the 2013 America the Beautiful coin.

The 2004 coin featured the monument under a bird and between wheat ears making them look like caricatures. The 2013 America the Beautiful quarter dollar features a better design with a worker beneath Jefferson’s eye. .

Numismatists know Gutzon Borglum better as the designer of the Stone Mountain half dollar which features Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee on the obverse and an eagle on the reverse. .

Borglum was initially chosen to sculpt a memorial to the Confederacy on Stone Mountain, Georgia. The plan was on but just after he finished creating Lee’s head, he was fired. Experts believed that he concentrated more on the coin models than the stone sculpting.

Augustus H. Lukeman took over the project till the budget went dry in 1928. Work was initiated again in 1963 and was completed in 1970. The actual Stone Mountain is very different from the Borglum’s coin. .

James Earle Fraser, designer of Indian Head five-cent piece, approved the design finally even though he was not very happy with it.