Great Stone Faces Good July 26 51 For 1. 5 BillionThe sparkle in Lincoln s eye is a 30 inch long granite block.A man could stand erect in Jefferson s eyeball.One question almost every tourist asks is, How long will it last? The age of the memorial it is named after Charles E. Rush more, a mining engineer was fixed by geologists at nearly 1, 500, 000, 000 years. They have estimated the memorial would erode at the rate of an inch every 100, 000 years.Told of this, Sculptor Borglum switched his plans to add another foot to Washington s nose, and explained That will give it another million years at least. Most tourists, probably Democrats, feel they put the wrong president Roosevelt on the mountain, and want to know when F. D. R. s face will make a quintet of the quartet. The answer of most natives Never as long as South Dakota votes Republican. The memorial, first proposed in 1924 by Doane Robinson, a historian, was actively opposed by many leading Dakota citizens. Th#y liked their Black Hills as they were. They didn t want them turned into a mountain art gallery.But Sculptor Borglum took up the dream. He wanted to put a part of the American story in stone as a rebuke to future selfish coveting civilizations. He wanted his monumental carvings placed so high they would never be pulled down for lesser purposes. He wanted them as close to heaven as we can, where they would endure until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away. His heart, weakened by years of work in high altitude, failed in 1941. But his task was largely done. Today Mount Rushmore is a national shrine. Visitors who come to see it now spend millions annually in South Dakota, the state that at first rejected Borglum s great dream.By Hal BoyleMOUNT RUSHMORE, S. D., AP Four great stone faces of America s past look serenely out across the mountains here.And each year nearly 750, 000 living Americans come to stare up at this quartet of their national heroes, fixed forever in granite.It took 900, 000 and it killed a great sculptor, Gutzom Borglum, to put these great stone faces on a 6000 foot peak in the Black Hills. The faces are of four American presidents. Reading from left to right, they are George Washington, Thomas Jeffarson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.Each measures 60 feet from chin to forehead, the height of a five story building. Gigantic FacesThe gigantic faces would break into big stone grins if they could hear the remarks of some tourists, confused at their identity. The children are often better than their parents at naming all four correctly. Almost all the visitors recognize Lincoln and Washington.But several have stared up at Roosevelt and demanded How did Tom Dewey get up there? Oddly, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and bought this whole area from France in the Louisiana purchase, is the most confusing. Many guess him to be President Monroe or President Madison.And it is a wonder that Jefferson didn t blush at one wife who told her questioning husband The one next to Washington? You re a college graduate, John, and you mean to tell me you don t recognize Martha Washington. The tourists are always impressed by such facts about the memorial as The nose of Washington is longer than the entire head of the sphinx. If turned upside down and filled with water, six men could swim comfortably in it.If completed, the figures wouldbe 465 feet tall from toe to crown.