标准英语听说【13】

In the Black Hills of North Dakota four famous faces stare out of the face of a granite cliff. The faces are those of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt. The average height of each face is 60 feet (4.57 meters)! The faces of the four American presidents comprise the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. They are the largest sculptures in the world.

The busts of the four presidents were blasted out of a granite cliff by Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln. Gutzon worked on the project for 14 years from 1927 to 1941 but did not finish the busts before his death. The son finished the monuments in the same year of his father's death. Nearly one million tons of granite were removed to create the sculptured faces.

Also called the Shrine of Democracy, the Mount Rushmore sculptures can be seen from a distance of 60 miles (96km)!