Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota's Black Hills depicts the 60-foot-tall faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, carved directly into a granite mountainside. It stands as one of the most recognized monuments to American history and democracy.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum chose the four presidents to represent the nation's founding, growth, preservation, and development. The memorial sits on land considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux, a history that remains part of ongoing conversations about the site.

The idea for a monumental carving in the Black Hills originated with South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson, who hoped to draw tourism to the region. He invited sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who chose Mount Rushmore for its granite face and proposed presidents rather than Robinson's original idea of Western frontier figures.

Carving began in 1927 and continued for fourteen years, employing about 400 workers who removed roughly 450,000 tons of rock using dynamite and jackhammers, with remarkably few injuries and no deaths from the carving itself. Funding and work were intermittent through the Great Depression, sustained partly by federal appropriations.

Borglum died in March 1941, and his son Lincoln Borglum completed the work later that year, ending the project before the planned torsos were carved. The memorial land lies within the Black Hills, taken from the Lakota Sioux following the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 — a history the National Park Service now interprets alongside the monument itself.