Billy Kingsley, age 12, of Jamestown, N.Y., for his question:

HOW WAS MOUNT RUSHMORE CARVED?

Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota shows the faces of four American presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Gutzon Borglum designed the memorial and supervised most of its work. Workmen used models that were one twelfth actual size to obtain measurements for the figures.

The models were lifted to the edge of the cliff to guide the workmen. The men then cut the figures from Mount Rushmore's granite cliff with drills and dynamite.

Work on the memorial started in 1927 and continued, with lapses, over 14 years.

The head of Washington is about 60 feet high, or about as tall as a five story building. If this was completed with a man in the same scale, the figure would be 465 feet tall.

The monument is located 25 miles from Rapid City and is 5,725 feet above sea level. The carving is more than 500 feet above the valley floor.