November 7, 2025 • 9 mins
A BIOGRAPHY OF A MOUNTAIN: The Making and Meaning of Mt. Rushmore, by Matthew Davis (St. Martin's Press, on sale November 11, 2025, $30.00), is a powerful comprehensive history of Mt. Rushmore, written in light of recent political controversies, and a timely retrospective for the monument's 100th anniversary in 2025. Davis has penned an impressive work of narrative nonfiction, combining history with reportage, bringing this complicated and nuanced story of the famous, and infamous, mountain to life.From the lands origins as sacred tribal ground; to the expansion of the American West; to the complicated and larger-than-life personality of Gutzon Borglum, the artist who carved the presidential faces into the mountain; and, up to the politicized present-day conflicts over the site and its future, Matthew Davis paints a fascinating picture of perhaps the most debated monument in our nation. Gerard Baker, the first Native American superintendent of Mt. Rushmore shared this sentiment about the mountain with the author: "Well, most people want to come to a national park and leave with that warm fuzzy feeling with an ice cream cone. Rushmore can't do that if you do it the right way. If you do it the right way people are going to be leaving pissed." That perhaps sums up the complicated history of Rushmore better than any other, especially with talk of additional sculpture(s) added to the side of the mountain?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey wanna thank you for supporting all of my podcasts,
all seventeen of them, and now they are centrally located.
You don't have to go to a digital platform going
what did he say? Just go to Aero dot net,
a r roe dot net and enjoy. Thank you so
much for all your love and support. Matthew Davis. I
wish I would have had this book back in the
latter part of the nineteen sixties when I was studying
(00:21):
Mount Rushmore in the state of Montana, because this book
right here is more than I ever wish I could
ever have as a child. And you have no idea
what you're doing to my imagination.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
That's great, that's great. To hell, thanks for having me
on aara.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh my god, where did you dig up all this information?
Because there's just so much about this and the people
and the and the inner battles and the challenges and
oh my god. I mean it's like you really go
to town on.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
This westward expansion, our relationship to indigenous communities, our search
for gold, you know, our creativity or ambition. These these
code words are important words like democracy and freedom. They
all sort of come together in Mount rush More and
it really allowed me as a writer a lot of
leeway to explore different kinds of topics and issues.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I would love to see your notes though, I really would, Matthew,
because I want to see how you put this together
in the way that you do it in chronological form.
But at the same time, you're allowing me to see
the future. And I don't know if it's because as
a reader, I know the future.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, well, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I mean, I think part of it is starting the
book starts in July through twenty twenty and sort of
then works its way backwards and then comes back out
to that to the present day. And I think, you know,
that's one of the things that I'm really hoping to
get forward in this book is that the present really
deeply influences the past. And what I mean by that
is that how we think about the past today, you know,
(01:46):
impacts and what's happening today impacts how we think about
the past. And so, you know, as we as people,
as we as Americans are celebrating our two hundred and
fiftieth birthday, questions about how we got here. For me,
the question of well, how did Mount Rushmore or get
into the Black Hills really allowed me to look at
the present day and then go backwards to sort of
(02:06):
answer that question.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Well, I mean, my father useduld call the Mount Rushmore.
He said, yeah, we don't have to go to Saint
Louis to see the arch. When you want to get
into the real wild West, it starts at Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Was he wrong?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
That's interesting. I have never heard that before. But I
don't think he is wrong. I mean, I think that
you have if you're talking about the wild West, Okay,
what that conjures you're really talking I think about about
sort of three things, Right, You're talking about gold rushes,
You're talking about our relationships with indigenous communities, and you're
talking about sort of this sort of individual lawlessness that
sort of associated with the wild West. And I think
(02:41):
all three of those things are deeply important at Mount Rushmore,
and in particular, you know, the reason, the reason why
the memorial is controversial, the reason why I think it's
important to take a wide lens view of it is
because of the land itself and our relationship, in particular
with the Lakota Nation. Right, you had the United States
and the Lakota signed a treaty in eighteen sixty eight,
(03:04):
called the Treaty of Fort Laramie. In that treaty, the
US basically sued for peace and gave the Lakota a
lot of land which included present day western South Dakota,
which included the Black Hills of South Dakota, which of
course is where Mount Rushmore is today. And no sooner
was that treaty signed than several years later it was
violated after George Custer was defeated and the Battle Little Beecorn,
(03:28):
the Battle of Greasy Grass as a Native Americans call
it in your home state of Montana, the United States
was enraged at this defeat and took over the Black Hills,
breaking the treaty. And so that legacy is very present
at the memorial today, and it's sort of a history
that sometimes is there and sometimes it is not.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Please do not move. There's more with Matthew Davis coming
up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
with Matthew Davis. You just said something here where you
opened up my heart. Because nobody talks about the Greasy
Grass of Montana because unless you have really done your
homework and you understand what that area of history is
all about. Man I commend you on that you understand
(04:08):
where this process took place.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
But the thing is that you bring up Custer. I
guess the angle that I had growing up in the
state of Montana was I was on the Native American side.
That's just who I am as a person, and so
to see what was going on on that sacred land
to this day, my heart is still going why there
had to have been another place. But then again, in
reading the book, I'm going, no, I think it was
(04:33):
the perfect place, because this is if that ground was
so sacred, then Mount Rushmore had to happen.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, I think one of the interesting things about why
Mount Rushmore came to be in the Black Hills is
that the story is more of an economic story than
a political story.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I mean, I.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Think because people view the memorial itself as this very ambitious,
giant monument. Many as soon that it was the federal
government that said, you know what, We're going to build
a memorial in the Black Hills. But really the idea
was from a state historian in South Dakota, a guy
named Doan Robinson, who was very attuned to the economic
(05:14):
fluctuations of South Dakota in the nineteen twenties, and at
that time, the state was going through a very difficult
economic period, and Doan Robinson wanted to diversify South Dakota's
economy away from agriculture and commodities, and so he had
an idea to build a sculpture in the Black Hills
that would attract car tourists that were beginning to grow
(05:34):
around this part of the United States. And so he
wanted to create sculptures in the Black Hills that were
representative of the American West, like people like Custer, people
like the Great Lakota Leader Red Cloud, people like Saka
Joweyah who guided Lewis and Clark West, people like Lewis
and Clark. So that was his initial idea and it
was a way to drum up tourism. Now, when the
(05:56):
idea came into the hands of the sculptor of Mount Rushmore,
a men in guns Borglum, Yes, it completely changed and
metamorphosed into a much more political project that I think
has lasting resonance today.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I can't be the only one time kid who still
sits there and looks at Mount Rushmore, going can they
really fit another face up there? Or are we going
to have to continue this story in another part of
the country.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Most people you speak to will tell you that there
is no room for another face on Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Geologically, it's just not possible.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And you know, I don't know if that means that
it will never be attempted, but I think most people
say that it can never be done.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, but do we have the time. Let's be honest, Matthew.
We are the generation that wants everything right now. And
you can look at Crazy Horse, which is still unfinished,
and sit there and say, I mean, look, how many
years have gone by.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, that's a great point. Crazy Horse Memorial is right
down the road from Mount Rushmore, and that is an
ongoing memorial that is still not completed, although it's under
new leadership now and I think there's a lot of
hope that it might get completed at some point. But
even you know, in the way that Mount Rushmore was
built in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, it would
be an entirely different process today. I mean, back then,
(07:08):
there was no laser technology. There weren't even environmental studies
that were done on whether it could happen. Gunsten Borgland
the sculptor really had to act on faith to try
to get this thing completed, and he ended up, you know,
completing it, at least he didn't complete it to what
he had originally envisioned.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
But the four faces stand today.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You know, I are you getting speaking engagements there at
Mount Rushmore, and I would love to see you even
at Battle of the Little Big Horn, that monument there.
And the reason why is because all of this is connected,
and that's what people need to understand. It's all connected
together in history.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
It is all connected together in history.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And that's one of the things I try to do
in my book, A biography of a mountain is really
sort of with this through line, show how the memorial.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Came to be. I will be speaking in South Dakota.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I will not be at the actual memorial itself, but
I'll be doing a couple of events in Rapid City.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I would love to come to the bat a little big.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Corner to Montana and speak there as well, because I think,
you know, obviously that story what happened on that battlefield
is absolutely crucial to the story of Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Gerard Baker, we don't hear much about this guy. Hopefully
they're talking about him there because I mean, this guy
was the first. But does everybody know his.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Name Gerard Baker? No? No one. I mean I wouldn't
say no.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
People know Gerard bag people within certain communities in the
National Park Service, and Native Americans know Gerard Baker. But
he was the first. He was the first Native American
superintendent of Mount Rushmore. And he was the one that
introduced a lot of different Lakota themes, Native American themes
to the memorial that still continue today, and that really
expanded the story of Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Wow, where can people go to find out more about you, Matthew,
Because I want them to dive into your research because
you get it. You understand the process of preservation in
this nation.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
The best way to reached me is to go to
my website matthewdaviswriter dot com and you can find all
different ways to interrupt with me there.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, you got to come back to this show anytime
in the future, dude. I mean, heck, I'd like to
meet you out there in Montana where we could just
go for a walk.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
That would be great. It can have me on any
time or I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Man, Will you be brilliant today.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Okay, thank you, appreciate it.
Hey wanna thank you for supporting all of my podcasts,
all seventeen of them, and now they are centrally located.
You don't have to go to a digital platform going
what did he say? Just go to Aero dot net,
a r roe dot net and enjoy. Thank you so
much for all your love and support. Matthew Davis. I
wish I would have had this book back in the
latter part of the nineteen sixties when I was studying
(00:21):
Mount Rushmore in the state of Montana, because this book
right here is more than I ever wish I could
ever have as a child. And you have no idea
what you're doing to my imagination.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
That's great, that's great. To hell, thanks for having me
on aara.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh my god, where did you dig up all this information?
Because there's just so much about this and the people
and the and the inner battles and the challenges and
oh my god. I mean it's like you really go
to town on.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
This westward expansion, our relationship to indigenous communities, our search
for gold, you know, our creativity or ambition. These these
code words are important words like democracy and freedom. They
all sort of come together in Mount rush More and
it really allowed me as a writer a lot of
leeway to explore different kinds of topics and issues.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I would love to see your notes though, I really would, Matthew,
because I want to see how you put this together
in the way that you do it in chronological form.
But at the same time, you're allowing me to see
the future. And I don't know if it's because as
a reader, I know the future.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, well, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I mean, I think part of it is starting the
book starts in July through twenty twenty and sort of
then works its way backwards and then comes back out
to that to the present day. And I think, you know,
that's one of the things that I'm really hoping to
get forward in this book is that the present really
deeply influences the past. And what I mean by that
is that how we think about the past today, you know,
(01:46):
impacts and what's happening today impacts how we think about
the past. And so, you know, as we as people,
as we as Americans are celebrating our two hundred and
fiftieth birthday, questions about how we got here. For me,
the question of well, how did Mount Rushmore or get
into the Black Hills really allowed me to look at
the present day and then go backwards to sort of
(02:06):
answer that question.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Well, I mean, my father useduld call the Mount Rushmore.
He said, yeah, we don't have to go to Saint
Louis to see the arch. When you want to get
into the real wild West, it starts at Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Was he wrong?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
That's interesting. I have never heard that before. But I
don't think he is wrong. I mean, I think that
you have if you're talking about the wild West, Okay,
what that conjures you're really talking I think about about
sort of three things, Right, You're talking about gold rushes,
You're talking about our relationships with indigenous communities, and you're
talking about sort of this sort of individual lawlessness that
sort of associated with the wild West. And I think
(02:41):
all three of those things are deeply important at Mount Rushmore,
and in particular, you know, the reason, the reason why
the memorial is controversial, the reason why I think it's
important to take a wide lens view of it is
because of the land itself and our relationship, in particular
with the Lakota Nation. Right, you had the United States
and the Lakota signed a treaty in eighteen sixty eight,
(03:04):
called the Treaty of Fort Laramie. In that treaty, the
US basically sued for peace and gave the Lakota a
lot of land which included present day western South Dakota,
which included the Black Hills of South Dakota, which of
course is where Mount Rushmore is today. And no sooner
was that treaty signed than several years later it was
violated after George Custer was defeated and the Battle Little Beecorn,
(03:28):
the Battle of Greasy Grass as a Native Americans call
it in your home state of Montana, the United States
was enraged at this defeat and took over the Black Hills,
breaking the treaty. And so that legacy is very present
at the memorial today, and it's sort of a history
that sometimes is there and sometimes it is not.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Please do not move. There's more with Matthew Davis coming
up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
with Matthew Davis. You just said something here where you
opened up my heart. Because nobody talks about the Greasy
Grass of Montana because unless you have really done your
homework and you understand what that area of history is
all about. Man I commend you on that you understand
(04:08):
where this process took place.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
But the thing is that you bring up Custer. I
guess the angle that I had growing up in the
state of Montana was I was on the Native American side.
That's just who I am as a person, and so
to see what was going on on that sacred land
to this day, my heart is still going why there
had to have been another place. But then again, in
reading the book, I'm going, no, I think it was
(04:33):
the perfect place, because this is if that ground was
so sacred, then Mount Rushmore had to happen.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, I think one of the interesting things about why
Mount Rushmore came to be in the Black Hills is
that the story is more of an economic story than
a political story.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I mean, I.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Think because people view the memorial itself as this very ambitious,
giant monument. Many as soon that it was the federal
government that said, you know what, We're going to build
a memorial in the Black Hills. But really the idea
was from a state historian in South Dakota, a guy
named Doan Robinson, who was very attuned to the economic
(05:14):
fluctuations of South Dakota in the nineteen twenties, and at
that time, the state was going through a very difficult
economic period, and Doan Robinson wanted to diversify South Dakota's
economy away from agriculture and commodities, and so he had
an idea to build a sculpture in the Black Hills
that would attract car tourists that were beginning to grow
(05:34):
around this part of the United States. And so he
wanted to create sculptures in the Black Hills that were
representative of the American West, like people like Custer, people
like the Great Lakota Leader Red Cloud, people like Saka
Joweyah who guided Lewis and Clark West, people like Lewis
and Clark. So that was his initial idea and it
was a way to drum up tourism. Now, when the
(05:56):
idea came into the hands of the sculptor of Mount Rushmore,
a men in guns Borglum, Yes, it completely changed and
metamorphosed into a much more political project that I think
has lasting resonance today.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I can't be the only one time kid who still
sits there and looks at Mount Rushmore, going can they
really fit another face up there? Or are we going
to have to continue this story in another part of
the country.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Most people you speak to will tell you that there
is no room for another face on Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Geologically, it's just not possible.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And you know, I don't know if that means that
it will never be attempted, but I think most people
say that it can never be done.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, but do we have the time. Let's be honest, Matthew.
We are the generation that wants everything right now. And
you can look at Crazy Horse, which is still unfinished,
and sit there and say, I mean, look, how many
years have gone by.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, that's a great point. Crazy Horse Memorial is right
down the road from Mount Rushmore, and that is an
ongoing memorial that is still not completed, although it's under
new leadership now and I think there's a lot of
hope that it might get completed at some point. But
even you know, in the way that Mount Rushmore was
built in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, it would
be an entirely different process today. I mean, back then,
(07:08):
there was no laser technology. There weren't even environmental studies
that were done on whether it could happen. Gunsten Borgland
the sculptor really had to act on faith to try
to get this thing completed, and he ended up, you know,
completing it, at least he didn't complete it to what
he had originally envisioned.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
But the four faces stand today.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You know, I are you getting speaking engagements there at
Mount Rushmore, and I would love to see you even
at Battle of the Little Big Horn, that monument there.
And the reason why is because all of this is connected,
and that's what people need to understand. It's all connected
together in history.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
It is all connected together in history.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And that's one of the things I try to do
in my book, A biography of a mountain is really
sort of with this through line, show how the memorial.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Came to be. I will be speaking in South Dakota.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I will not be at the actual memorial itself, but
I'll be doing a couple of events in Rapid City.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I would love to come to the bat a little big.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Corner to Montana and speak there as well, because I think,
you know, obviously that story what happened on that battlefield
is absolutely crucial to the story of Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Gerard Baker, we don't hear much about this guy. Hopefully
they're talking about him there because I mean, this guy
was the first. But does everybody know his.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Name Gerard Baker? No? No one. I mean I wouldn't
say no.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
People know Gerard bag people within certain communities in the
National Park Service, and Native Americans know Gerard Baker. But
he was the first. He was the first Native American
superintendent of Mount Rushmore. And he was the one that
introduced a lot of different Lakota themes, Native American themes
to the memorial that still continue today, and that really
expanded the story of Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Wow, where can people go to find out more about you, Matthew,
Because I want them to dive into your research because
you get it. You understand the process of preservation in
this nation.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
The best way to reached me is to go to
my website matthewdaviswriter dot com and you can find all
different ways to interrupt with me there.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, you got to come back to this show anytime
in the future, dude. I mean, heck, I'd like to
meet you out there in Montana where we could just
go for a walk.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
That would be great. It can have me on any
time or I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Man, Will you be brilliant today.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Okay, thank you, appreciate it.
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