Mount Rushmore National Memorial

The monument began not as a patriotic vision but as a tourism scheme. In 1923 a South Dakota historian named Doane Robinson dreamed up the idea of carving giant figures into the Black Hills to pull travelers to the state. His original plan was to carve Western heroes such as the Lakota leader Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and the explorers Lewis and Clark into the granite pillars known as the Needles.

To execute it he brought in the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who rejected Robinson's plan on two counts. He judged the Needles too thin and fragile to carve, and he wanted a subject of national rather than regional appeal, so he chose four presidents and a broad 400-foot cliff face able to hold them. The site he picked was on ground sacred to the Lakota, a decision that disregarded the mountain's existing meaning.

Borglum designed the sculpture and oversaw the work from 1927 until his death shortly before its completion in 1941, aided by his son Lincoln Borglum. Some four hundred workers, many of them out-of-work miners from the region, did the actual carving, and the technique was startling: about 90 percent of the mountain was removed with carefully placed dynamite, blasting away rock in controlled amounts to rough out each face.

From there the crews switched to jackhammers and a method called honeycombing, drilling closely spaced holes to weaken the granite so it could be removed by hand, and finally to fine hand tools to smooth the surface into skin, eyes, and expression. The scale is hard to grasp until you stand below it; each head is roughly the height of a six-story building.

Borglum never fully finished his design. He had envisioned the figures carved to the waist and a great hall of records cut into the mountain behind them, but funding and his death ended the work at the four heads. His original scale model, on display in the Sculptor's Studio at the site, shows what the complete vision would have been.

The granite of Mount Rushmore is part of the Black Hills, which the Lakota hold sacred and call by names including the Six Grandfathers. Under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 the United States guaranteed this land to the Lakota Sioux, but after gold was discovered in the Hills in the 1870s the government seized the area, breaking the treaty. Carving four American presidents into a mountain at the center of that broken promise is why the memorial means such different things to different people.

The National Park Service, which now cares for the site, presents both sides of the story, and the visitor center and ranger programs address the history of the land and its people alongside the account of the carving. Many visitors leave with a richer, more thoughtful understanding than the postcard image suggests.

As a place to experience, it remains extraordinary. Walk the Avenue of Flags to the viewing terrace, take the Presidential Trail loop to stand almost beneath the cliff, visit the Sculptor's Studio, and in summer stay for the evening lighting ceremony when the faces glow against the dark. Give it a couple of hours, come early or late to beat the crowds, and let it be the thought-provoking landmark it truly is.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.