The Italian Immigrant Who Carved Mount Rushmore's Faces

Every year, millions of visitors look up at Mount Rushmore and see four familiar faces carved into granite. Almost none of them know the name of the man responsible for the expressions in those faces: Luigi Del Bianco, an Italian immigrant stonecutter who became the memorial's official Chief Carver.

From Headstones to a Mountain

Del Bianco was born in 1892 and immigrated to the United States from Italy as a teenager.

He had already studied carving in Venice and Austria. In New York, he built a respected headstone and monument business in Port Chester.

Before Mount Rushmore, he worked with sculptor Gutzon Borglum on the Stone Mountain memorial in Georgia and the Wars of America monument in Newark. That partnership is what brought him to South Dakota.

The Man Trusted With the Faces

Del Bianco joined the Mount Rushmore crew in 1933. Two years later, Borglum gave him a title no other carver on the mountain held.

He named Del Bianco Chief Carver, in charge of the most delicate work on the project: the refinement of expression on all four presidents' faces.

Dynamite and jackhammers roughed out the granite. Del Bianco's job came after, with smaller tools and steadier hands. He shaped the twinkle in Lincoln's eyes and repaired a dangerous crack running through Jefferson's lip.

Borglum later wrote that Del Bianco was "worth any three men I could find in America" for that particular kind of work.

An Official Title, Decades Later

In 2017, the National Park Service unveiled a bronze plaque at the Lincoln Borglum Visitor Center formally naming Del Bianco as Mount Rushmore's Chief Carver.

The confirmation came from Borglum's own papers, held at the Library of Congress, which spelled out the role in his handwriting.

Still There Today

Four presidents still look out over the Black Hills, their expressions exactly as an immigrant stonecutter shaped them nearly a century ago.