The Lower Pump House, also known as the Borglum Studio, is a super cool piece of history! This building was used by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who designed Mount Rushmore. It was originally built during the expansion of the city’s water system, powered by water that flowed from the river about a mile away through a long, earthen raceway. The building itself is made of ashlar limestone and wood framing, and it sits just southeast of the golf clubhouse, right on the edge of an old river channel.

While the raceway was filled in years ago, you can still see parts of it today. If you head over to Mulberry Avenue, you can spot old rubble stone wing walls on the south side of the street, and a depression in the ground where the channel used to run through the golf course. You can even see big pipes sticking out of the building’s basement—those were part of the original pumping system!

Later on, when the pump house was repurposed for other uses, they built a frame addition at the north end, but the stone base remains intact, and you can still find remnants of the old pipes in both the upper and lower levels.