Mount Rushmore

Are you affiliated with Mount Rushmore? Nope.

Have you ever been to Mount Rushmore? That would be a negative.

What is Mount Rushmore? Finally, a question we can answer. Thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. ;)

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is centered around a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture’s design and oversaw the project’s execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son Lincoln Borglum.

The sculptures feature the 60-foot (18 m) heads of:

George Washington (1732–1799)

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

The memorial park covers 1,278.45 acres (2.00 sq mi; 5.17 km2) and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.

South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the region.

His initial idea was to sculpt the Needles; however, Gutzon Borglum rejected the Needles because of the poor quality of the granite and strong opposition from American Indian groups.

They settled on Mount Rushmore, which also has the advantage of facing southeast for maximum sun exposure. Robinson wanted it to feature American West heroes such as Lewis and Clark, Red Cloud, and Buffalo Bill Cody.

Borglum decided that the sculpture should have broader appeal and chose the four presidents.

Senator Peter Norbeck sponsored the project and secured federal funding; construction began in 1927. The presidents’ faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941. His son Lincoln took over as leader of the construction project. Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist.

Lack of funding forced construction to end on October 31, 1941.

Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually.