Book of Secrets (2007)
Mount Rushmore
From the film · 01:42:00
“It's not a monument. It's a marker.”
The Black Hills, South Dakota, a frozen morning at the foot of the monument
What we know
Gutzon Borglum's 1927-1941 sculpture of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt — and what is hidden behind it
Borglum was a Freemason. He was approached, in this film's mythology, by a small consortium that knew exactly what was inside the mountain — the Olmec city of Cibola, hidden behind a granite bluff for several centuries — and he chose to disguise the access by carving four presidential faces over it. The carving is a seal as much as a monument. The "eagle's hand" we are looking for is a particular formation: a stone outcrop shaped like a raptor, with a "hand" that is a five-fingered cleft in the rock. Pour water on the cleft, exactly as we did at Mount Vernon, and a triangular keystone marker resolves. The keystone is removable. Behind the keystone is a corridor.
The Puzzle
Pull the keystone. Walk in. Don't break the chamber's counterweight.