Mount Rushmore influenced local Sioux, national auto tourism [video 58min]

October 31, 2006, marks the 65th anniversary of the completion of Mount Rushmore. In the early 20th century, the US government conceived an art project that it hoped would serve as a testament to democracy, says author John Taliaferro. In Great White Fathers he describes artist Gutzom Borglum's realization of the idea by sculpting four presidents' heads into a cliff face in the South Dakota Black Hills. Taliaferro is the former senior editor of Newsweek. He is also the author of Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs; Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist; and the forthcoming In a Far Country: The True Story of a Mission, a Marriage, a Murder, and the Remarkable Reindeer Rescue of 1898. This interview with Taliaferro was conducted in 2002.