Question: For what reason did Borglum choose this site?
About the article "Mount Rushmore", section "Geology".

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Borglum was busy between the passage of the bill and the end of May 1924, first working on the Children's Founders Roll medal, and then the half dollar.
The Children's Founders Roll was open to white children up to the age of 18 who contributed one dollar to the building of the monument.
Borglum must still have been fine-tuning the monument's design; Jackson's posture on the medal differs from that on the coin.
Unlike the issued coin, Borglum's models showed the front part of Davis's horse, although the Confederate president is unseen, and marching soldiers appear in the background.
Borglum met with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon who questioned first why "In God We Trust" appeared directly over Lee's head; Borglum responded that it was to pay tribute to the Confederates' faith.
Mellon then asked what the thirteen stars on the obverse represented; Borglum replied that those on the north side of the Mason-Dixon Line could consider them to represent the thirteen original colonies (those south of it, the implication was, could consider them to be a tribute to the Southern states).
Mellon laughed and gave preliminary approval.
On July 2, Mellon showed the designs to President Coolidge; they were then sent to the Commission of Fine Arts for its members' opinions.
According to numismatists William D. Hyder and R.W.
Colbert, "Borglum, to put it mildly, was a temperamental artist who managed to offend most everyone with whom he worked".
They note that "Borglum's past insolence had not left him in the good graces of the art community" and his designs met a hostile reception at the commission.
Sculptor member James Earle Fraser, designer of the Buffalo nickel, rejected Borglum's initial design on July 22, eight days after they were received.
The inscription on the reverse included a tribute to Harding; Fraser deemed it inartistic.
Borglum submitted a second set on August 14, this was again rejected; the commission criticized the design, which seemed to be only a segment of a larger one, rather than specifically designed to fit a half dollar.
Borglum wanted to ignore what he deemed "damn fool suggestions", but the Association threatened to fire him if he did not complete the coin.
Borglum was concerned the reverse was still too crowded, and proposed leaving off the eagle, but space was saved when Coolidge did not like the reference to Harding, and it was omitted.
With the eagle still in place on the reverse, Fraser finally approved the designs on October 10, 1924.
In all, Borglum made nine plaster models for the design.
Even though all necessary approvals had been received, the Philadelphia Mint refused to proceed with preparations because of the lack of the mention of Harding, which it believed was congressionally mandated.
Borglum wired Coolidge on October 31, notifying him of the problem; the President confirmed his approval of the design the following day.
Despite the support of the federal government for the coin, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of Union Civil War veterans, tried to prevent the issuance of a coin they believed honored treason by lobbying in late 1924 and early 1925.
Work on the sculpture slowed (the head of Jackson was then being carved) because of the sculptor being distracted by designing the coin, flaws in the rock on Stone Mountain, and the fact that the Association had ceased fundraising efforts in anticipation of a campaign to sell the coin.
Revenues from the medal were not sufficient to meet expenses.
The obverse of the half dollar depicts Confederate generals Lee and Jackson, the latter with head bare, mounted on horseback.
Although both Lee and Jackson were respected in the North, Davis would not have been acceptable on a federal coin, and he was omitted, although he appears on the Children's Founders Roll medal which Borglum adapted for the obverse of the half dollar.
There are thirteen stars in the upper field of the obverse; they represent the thirteen states which either joined the Confederacy or had Confederate factions.
Borglum's initials, "GB", are found on the extreme right of the piece, near the horses' tails.
The reverse depicts an eagle with wings stretched, representative of liberty, perched upon a mountaintop.
There are 35 stars in the field, supposedly to represent the number of states at the start of the Civil War, although there were in fact 34 in 1861, and there were 35 states only from 1863 to 1864, between the admissions of West Virginia and Nevada.
Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, writing in 1971, noted that the half dollar represents an unusual circumstance in American art, where a designer uses a coin as a "bozzetto" or small-scale model of a work to be completed.
Vermeule considered the children's medal a better work of art, due to the inclusion of Davis.
He believed that Borglum's original design, before its rejection by the Commission of Fine Arts, was superior, as it included a sense of motion through the depiction of marching soldiers in the background, balanced by the inclusion of the head of Davis's horse, though the rebel president himself is unseen.
According to Vermeule, the original design "would have made a magnificent coin, an unusual compression of monumentality and power into a limited and unorthodox historical space". 
The Medallic Art Company of New York converted Borglum's models to coinage dies.
The first 1,000 Stone Mountain Memorial half dollars were struck on a medal press at the Philadelphia Mint on January 21, 1925, the 101st anniversary of General Jackson's birth; Borglum and officials of the Association were present.
The first piece struck was mounted on a plate made of gold mined in Georgia for presentation to President Coolidge.
The second was mounted on a silver plaque, and presented to Secretary Mellon.
The remainder of the first thousand were placed in numbered envelopes; some were presented to officials or those involved in the Stone Mountain project.
Between January and March 1925, that mint struck 2,310,000 of the authorized mintage of five million, plus 4,709 pieces reserved for inspection by the 1926 Assay Commission.
Except for the first thousand, for which Randolph paid in gold, the pieces were sent to the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, which advanced the funds to purchase them from the government.
Although the Association unveiled the completed head of Lee on January 19, 1924 (the general's birthday), within months, relations between itself and Borglum had become strained.
Technical problems over the medal and the work on the mountain caused tensions, and political differences between Borglum, a Republican, and Randolph, an active Democrat, led to poor relations between the two.
Borglum, Venable, and Randolph backed different KKK members for national leadership.
Both Borglum and the Association accused each other of graft; the sculptor proposed that he form a syndicate to purchase the half dollars from the Mint and sell them with the profits to be applied directly to construction costs.
Randolph ridiculed the suggestion, stating that it would allow Borglum to carve "whatever he pleased on the mountain".
Borglum accused Randolph of using donations for his own benefit, and spending freely on an expense account.
These dissensions became public, and in February 1925, the Association fired Borglum.
Randolph stated, as one reason for dismissing the sculptor, that Borglum had taken seven months to design the coin, when, he said, any competent artist could have done it in three weeks.
He accused Borglum of delaying so that the Association would be embarrassed.
According to Freeman, "despite all the points of conflict between Borglum and the committee, it was actually the commemorative coin that ended his career at Stone Mountain.
"Upon being dismissed, Borglum wrecked his models for the monument; the Association sought to have him jailed for destruction of property.
Borglum was addressing the ladies of the Atlanta chapter of the UDC when his assistant, Jesse Tucker, burst in and hurried him out the door with a minimum of explanation, only moments before a sheriff's deputy arrived to serve the warrant.
He left the state, but was arrested in Greensboro, North Carolina, though quickly allowed bail, and the Association abandoned extradition proceedings.
Freed, the sculptor soon took up a project in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore.
The publicity surrounding these events hurt the Association's fundraising, as did allegations that the Association had misused hundreds of thousands of dollars put aside for the project. 
The son of Mormon Danish immigrants, Danish-American Gutzon Borglum was born in 1867 in St. Charles in what was then Idaho Territory.
Borglum was a child of Mormon polygamy.
His father, Jens Møller Haugaard Børglum, had two wives when he lived in Idaho: Gutzon's mother and Gutzon's mother's sister, who was Jens's first wife.
Jens decided to leave Mormonism and moved back to Omaha, where polygamy was illegal and taboo; he left Gutzon's mother and took his first wife with him.
Jens worked mainly as a woodcarver before leaving Idaho to attend the Saint Louis Homeopathic Medical College in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Upon his graduation from the Missouri Medical College in 1874, Dr. Borglum moved the family to Fremont, Nebraska, where he established a medical practice.
Gutzon Borglum remained in Fremont until 1882, when his father enrolled him in St. Mary's College, Kansas.
After a brief stint at Saint Mary’s College, Gutzon Borglum relocated to Omaha, Nebraska, where he apprenticed in a machine shop and graduated from Creighton Preparatory School.
He was trained in Paris at the Académie Julian, where he came to know Auguste Rodin and was influenced by Rodin's impressionistic light-catching surfaces.
Back in the U.S. in New York City he sculpted saints and apostles for the new Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in 1901; in 1906 he had a group sculpture accepted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art— the first sculpture by a living American the museum had ever purchased—and made his presence further felt with some portraits.
He also won the Logan Medal of the Arts.
His reputation soon surpassed that of his younger brother, Solon Borglum, already an established sculptor.
In 1925, the sculptor moved to Texas to work on the monument to trail drivers commissioned by the Trail Drivers Association.
He completed the model in 1925, but due to lack of funds it was not cast until 1940, and then was only a fourth its originally planned size.
It stands in front of the Texas Pioneer and Trail Drivers Memorial Hall next to the Witte Museum in San Antonio.
Borglum lived at the historic Menger Hotel, which in the 1920s was the residence of a number of artists.
He subsequently planned the redevelopment of the Corpus Christi waterfront; the plan failed, although a model for a statue of Christ intended for it was later modified by his son and erected on a mountaintop in South Dakota.
While living and working in Texas, Borglum took an interest in local beautification.
He promoted change and modernity, although he was berated by academicians.
A fascination with gigantic scale and themes of heroic nationalism suited his extroverted personality.
His head of Abraham Lincoln, carved from a six-ton block of marble, was exhibited in Theodore Roosevelt's White House and can be found in the United States Capitol Crypt in Washington, D.C. A patriot, believing that the "monuments we have built are not our own," he looked to create art that was "American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement," according to a 1908 interview article.
His equation of being "American" with being born of American parents—"flesh of our flesh"—was characteristic of nativist beliefs in the early 20th century.
Borglum was highly suited to the competitive environment surrounding the contracts for public buildings and monuments, and his public sculpture is sited all around the United States.
In 1908, Borglum won a competition for a statue of the Civil War General Philip Sheridan to be placed in Sheridan Circle in Washington.
D.C. A second version was erected in Chicago, Illinois, in 1923.
Winning this competition was a personal triumph for him because he won out over sculptor J.Q.A.
Ward, a much older and more established artist and one whom Borglum had clashed with earlier in regard to the National Sculpture Society.
At the unveiling of the Sheridan statue, one observer, President Theodore Roosevelt (whom Borglum was later to include in the Mount Rushmore portrait group), declared that it was "first rate"; a critic wrote that "as a sculptor Gutzon Borglum was no longer a rumor, he was a fact."
(Smith:see References)Borglum was active in the committee that organized the New York Armory Show of 1913, the birthplace of modernism in American art.
By the time the show was ready to open, however, Borglum had resigned from the committee, feeling that the emphasis on avant-garde works had co-opted the original premise of the show and made traditional artists like himself look provincial.
He lived in Stamford, Connecticut for 10 years.
Borglum is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale in California in the Memorial Court of Honor.
His second wife, Mary Montgomery Williams Borglum, 1874–1955 (they were married May 20, 1909), is interred alongside him.
In addition to his son, Lincoln, he had a daughter, Mary Ellis (Mel) Borglum Vhay (1916–2002). 
James Lincoln de la Mothe Borglum (April 9, 1912 – January 27, 1986) was an American sculptor, photographer, author and engineer; he was best known for overseeing the completion of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial after the death in 1941 of the project's leader, his father Gutzon Borglum.
Named after his father's favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, and called by his middle name, Lincoln Borglum was the first child of Gutzon Borglum and his second wife, Mary.
During his youth, Lincoln accompanied his father to the Black Hills of South Dakota and was present when the site for the Mt.
Rushmore monument was selected.
Although he had originally planned to study engineering at the University of Virginia, Lincoln Borglum began work on the monument in 1933 at the age of 21 as an unpaid pointer.
Lincoln Borglum quickly moved into a series of more important jobs: he was put on the payroll in 1934, promoted to assistant sculptor in 1937, and promoted to superintendent in 1938 with an annual salary of $4,800.
Gutzon Borglum had nearly completed the 60-foot heads of the four presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and T. Roosevelt) when he died on March 6, 1941.
Lincoln Borglum had to abandon his father's ambitious plans to carry the work down to include the torsos of the presidents and an entablature due to a lack of funding; he left the monument largely in the state of completion it had reached under his father's direction.
Borglum was appointed Mount Rushmore National Memorial's first superintendent and began serving on October 1, 1941.
The work on the monument officially stopped on October 31, 1941.
He served in that capacity until May 15, 1944.
Borglum continued to work as a sculptor after leaving Mt.
Rushmore.
He created several religious works for churches in Texas including the well-known shrine "Our Lady of Loreto" in Goliad, and wrote three books.
Like many men who worked on the Rushmore project, Borglum's lungs were permanently scarred from breathing in granite dust associated with the blasting.
Borglum died in Corpus Christi, Texas at the age of 73.
One of his best known works, a bust of his father, is on display outside the "Lincoln Borglum Visitors Center" at Mount Rushmore.
Lincoln Borglum was a member of Battle River Masonic Lodge No.
92 in Hermosa, South Dakota. 
His Mount Rushmore project, 1927–1941, was the brainchild of South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson.
His first attempt with the face of Thomas Jefferson was blown up after two years.
Dynamite was also used to remove large areas of rock from under Washington's brow.
The initial pair of presidents, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson was soon joined by Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
Ivan Houser, father of John Sherrill Houser, was assistant sculptor to Gutzon Borglum in the early years of carving; he began working with Borglum shortly after the inception of themonument and was with Borglum for a total of seven years.
When Houser left Gutzon to devote his talents to his own work, Gutzon's son, Lincoln, took over as Assistant-Sculptor to his father.
Borglum alternated exhausting on-site supervising with world tours, raising money, polishing his personal legend, sculpting a Thomas Paine memorial for Paris and a Woodrow Wilson one for Poland.
In his absence, work at Mount Rushmore was overseen by his son, Lincoln Borglum.
During the Rushmore project, father and son were residents of Beeville, Texas.
When he died in Chicago, following complications after surgery, his son finished another season at Rushmore, but left the monument largely in the state of completion it had reached under his father's direction.