59 Fun Facts About Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore is located in which US state?

South Dakota has since tied its identity to the carving: state law makes "The Mount Rushmore State" its official nickname.

Which small Black Hills town lies nearest to Mount Rushmore?

Keystone lies just outside the memorial and has remade itself as a resort town for its millions of visitors.

Which of these lies about 25 miles northeast of Mount Rushmore?

Rapid City. Its mayor, John Boland, heard Borglum pitch the carving, backed it from the start and went on to manage the project's money through the Depression.

Which French sculptor befriended the young Gutzon Borglum while he studied art in Paris?

Auguste Rodin. Borglum had trained as a painter but turned to sculpture, the field in which his younger brother Solon was already making a name, and soon eclipsed him.

Mount Rushmore's Lakota name means Six Grandfathers; in Lakota belief, what are those grandfathers?

The spirits of the six directions are west, east, north and south plus the sky above and the earth below. The name is tied to a Lakota holy man's boyhood vision of six grandfather spirits.

Mount Rushmore is named after Charles E. Rushmore, a lawyer visiting from which city?

New York was home to Rushmore, who came in the 1880s to check land claims for investors back East. By his own account he asked what one peak was called, and the men with him said it had no name, so they would call it Rushmore.

Which newspaper magnate's papers ran a 1934 contest to write a history of America for Mount Rushmore?

William Randolph Hearst put up the prizes, but once the winners were chosen Borglum decided against carving any of their words into the mountain.

Years before Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum redesigned which part of the Statue of Liberty?

The torch. In 1916 Borglum redesigned it, replacing much of the original copper with stained glass.

Whose idea was it, in 1923, to carve a giant monument in the Black Hills to boost tourism?

State historian Doane Robinson is remembered as the Father of Mount Rushmore, yet when the commission to run the project was named in 1929 he was left off it.

Lincoln's face on Mount Rushmore was dedicated in 1937, on the 150th anniversary of which document's signing?

The Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, 150 years to the day before the unveiling. Lincoln's head fills the space where Borglum had planned to carve a short history of the nation.

The original 1923 plan for a Black Hills carving called for which kind of figures?

Old West heroes like Lewis and Clark, Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill came first. Borglum dropped them as too regional and chose presidents so the carving would speak to the whole nation.

Which Black Hills landmark was the first site proposed for the carving that became Mount Rushmore?

The Needles granite spires proved too thin and eroded to hold giant figures, so Borglum declared he would carve a whole mountain instead.

Before Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum began which other giant rock carving?

The Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain ended badly for Borglum: his backers fired him in 1925, he smashed his models and fled Georgia, and his carving of Robert E. Lee was later removed.

Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, was the son of immigrants from which country?

Denmark. Borglum was born in Idaho to one of a Danish Mormon's two wives, who were sisters; when his father gave up polygamy, it was Gutzon's mother he left.

Apart from its solid granite, why did Borglum pick Mount Rushmore's cliff for the carving?

It caught the most sunlight: the cliff faces southeast, so the morning sun falls on the presidents, and Borglum cared a great deal about how that light would strike the faces.

Mount Rushmore's carving ended in 1941, weeks before which event?

Pearl Harbor was attacked five weeks after the last drilling. With war looming, the unfinished carving had simply been declared complete as it stood.

Which British rock band put its own faces on Mount Rushmore for a 1970 album cover?

Deep Purple swapped the four presidents for its five members on the sleeve of In Rock. The album became the band's breakthrough, reaching No. 4 in Britain and staying on the chart for more than a year.

Which sitting president attended Mount Rushmore's dedication ceremony in August 1927?

Calvin Coolidge, spending that summer in the Black Hills, handed Borglum a set of steel drill bits to start the work, and Borglum asked him to write the inscription for the mountain.

Which local trade supplied most of Mount Rushmore's carvers?

Mining. Borglum grumbled that he had been given miners rather than artists, but men who understood rock turned out to be what carving a mountain needed.

How many workers died during the 14 years of carving Mount Rushmore?

Zero. For 14 years men hung on cables over the cliff face, and the project logged its share of accidents, yet not one of them was fatal.

About 90 percent of Mount Rushmore was carved with what?

Dynamite. Powdermen cut the sticks to size so exactly that the charges stopped within a few inches of the finished faces, leaving only the fine work to drills and chisels.

What did Mount Rushmore's carvers call drilling close-set holes to weaken the granite?

Honeycombing left the last few inches of granite so riddled with holes that the pieces popped off under a hammer and chisel. A bumper tool then buffed the faces smooth.

Mount Rushmore's carvers were lowered over the cliff on steel cables in a seat known as what?

A bosun chair hung each driller out of sight of the men cranking his winch, so call boys sat at the cliff edge relaying shouted instructions between them.

The Avenue of Flags leading to Mount Rushmore was created to mark which national occasion?

The US Bicentennial of 1976 brought the flags, which the Park Service says a visitor had asked for. The walkway now flies 56: one for each state, plus the District of Columbia and five territories and commonwealths.

In which 1996 comedy do alien invaders re-carve Mount Rushmore with their own faces?

Mars Attacks! swaps the four presidents for Martian faces. Film-makers like to wreck or reface the mountain, as Superman II also did, as shorthand for a threat to the whole country.

On Borglum's studio models for Mount Rushmore, one inch stood for what distance on the mountain?

One foot. Workers took thousands of measurements on the models, multiplied each by twelve and marked the result on the cliff to show the drillers where to cut.

About what height is each of the four presidents' heads on Mount Rushmore?

60 feet, about six stories. Borglum roamed the surrounding hills to judge each giant feature from a distance, studying its shadows for hours and ordering adjustments.

Besides a long stairway, what carried tools and, later, workers to the top of Mount Rushmore?

A cable tramway at first hauled only tools and supplies. A Park Service engineer later strengthened it and fitted an emergency brake so the men could ride up too.

Denied permission to film a chase on Mount Rushmore itself, where did Alfred Hitchcock shoot it?

On a Hollywood studio set: MGM's designers rebuilt the giant faces on a soundstage after officials decided the memorial was no place for his chase.

Where is most of the rock cut from Mount Rushmore today?

At the mountain's foot: about 450,000 tons of granite came off the cliff, and most of it was left where it fell, forming the grey slope visitors see beneath the faces.

What was the total bill for carving Mount Rushmore when work ended in 1941?

About $1 million, and never enough at once: over 14 years the money ran out again and again, and Borglum kept heading to Washington to ask for more.

Federal money for carving Mount Rushmore was at first meant only to match what?

Private donations were meant to cover half the cost, matched dollar for dollar. They never kept pace, and the federal government ended up paying most of the bill.

Which president's face was the first to be dedicated on Mount Rushmore?

George Washington was dedicated on July 4, 1930, less than three years into the work. The next face took six more years, after a false start on Jefferson had to be abandoned.

Borglum put Theodore Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore partly for pushing through which engineering project?

The Panama Canal, linking east and west, was one of Borglum's stated reasons. It helped that the sculptor had known Roosevelt personally and campaigned for him in 1912.

Why was Jefferson's first face on Mount Rushmore destroyed and carved again elsewhere?

The rock was too weak to hold the carving, so the unfinished Jefferson was removed and started again in a new position, forcing Borglum to rearrange the whole composition.

Borglum chose Lincoln for Mount Rushmore to represent which chapter of the nation's story?

Its preservation, through the ordeal of civil war. Borglum picked each president to stand for a stage in the first 150 years of the United States, not simply for his own life story.

Which land deal earned Jefferson his place on Mount Rushmore?

The Louisiana Purchase took in the very land the memorial stands on. Borglum even planned to carve a short history of the nation beside the faces on a panel shaped like the territory.

Who took over the carving of Mount Rushmore when Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941?

His son Lincoln, named for his father's favorite president, had started on the mountain in 1933 as an unpaid helper and was running the whole job by 1938. He closed the work down in October 1941.

Borglum's original design for Mount Rushmore showed the four presidents carved down to where?

To the waist. Work was halted in 1941 with only the heads done, though the carvers had started working down past Washington's chin.

What did Borglum plan to keep in the Hall of Records he began behind Mount Rushmore's heads?

The nation's founding documents were to sit in bronze and glass cabinets in a great hall reached by a grand stairway. Only a rough 70-foot tunnel had been cut when the work on it was abandoned.

In 1998 a sealed vault made of which metal was set into the floor of Mount Rushmore's Hall of Records?

Titanium. Inside, in a teakwood box under a granite capstone, lie 16 porcelain panels telling how and why the mountain was carved, left for people thousands of years from now.

Which president's 1933 order put Mount Rushmore under the Park Service?

Franklin D. Roosevelt's reorganization order set a Park Service engineer over the job. Borglum chafed at being watched and lobbied until, in 1938, control passed to a commission largely of his own choosing.

Which president formally dedicated Mount Rushmore in 1991, fifty years after carving ended?

George H. W. Bush officially dedicated the memorial on its 50th anniversary. In the 1930s each head had been unveiled with a ceremony of its own, but in 1941 the work was simply declared complete.

In 1999 Congress heard a proposal to add which former president's face to Mount Rushmore?

Ronald Reagan was put forward by a congressman who credited him with ending the Cold War. Park staff answered that there was no room and that another head would endanger the rock.

At what rate is the granite of Mount Rushmore's faces estimated to erode?

One inch every 10,000 years. With rock that hard, the real worry is cracks, so since 1998 instruments fixed to the faces have checked several times a day for the slightest movement.

Cracks in Mount Rushmore's faces are now sealed with which material, disguised with a sprinkling of granite dust?

Silicone replaced Borglum's own recipe, a paste of linseed oil, white lead and granite dust that dried out and let water in. Repair crews now patch the cracks every year.

Which 1868 treaty promised the Black Hills, where Mount Rushmore stands, to the Lakota in perpetuity?

The Treaty of Fort Laramie held for less than a decade. Once Custer's 1874 expedition found gold, prospectors poured in, and in 1877 the government took the Black Hills back.

What have the Sioux done with the Supreme Court's 1980 award for the Black Hills?

Refused it. The tribes say the Black Hills were never for sale and that taking payment would amount to selling them, so the untouched fund has grown past $1 billion.

The memorial's chief carver, Luigi Del Bianco, was a stonemason from which country?

He was hired specifically for 'refinement of expression' on the faces, and his family campaigned for decades before the Park Service formally recognized his role in 2017.

The mountain goats seen around Mount Rushmore descend from a 1924 gift to a nearby park from which country?

Canada gave the goats to Custer State Park in 1924. They escaped their pens, took to the granite peaks and have spread across the Black Hills ever since.

Which tree dominates the forest around Mount Rushmore?

Ponderosa pine covers the slopes so thickly that from a distance they look dark, which is how the Black Hills came by their name.

Which Lakota elder commissioned the Crazy Horse Memorial, begun in 1948 by a former Borglum assistant?

Henry Standing Bear invited Korczak Ziolkowski, who had worked briefly at Rushmore, to answer its white faces with a Lakota hero, writing that the chiefs wanted the white man to know 'the red man has great heroes' too.

Which 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller staged its climax on the faces of Mount Rushmore?

North by Northwest grew out of Hitchcock's old idea of a man hiding in Lincoln's nose on the mountain and being given away by a sneeze. Early drafts even took their title from that nose.

What did a decade of Fourth of July fireworks leave behind at Mount Rushmore?

Contaminated water: a 2016 US Geological Survey report found perchlorate, a chemical used in fireworks, in the memorial's streams and wells, and called the 1998 to 2009 displays the most probable cause.

Which grand nickname did sculptor Gutzon Borglum use for Mount Rushmore?

The Shrine of Democracy. At the 1936 unveiling of Jefferson's head, Borglum asked the visiting president from the podium to dedicate the carving as a shrine to democracy.

Which summit near Mount Rushmore was renamed in 2016 from a name honoring General William Harney?

Black Elk Peak was renamed by a federal board over the governor's objections, because General Harney's soldiers had killed Lakota women and children in 1855.

A failed 1937 bill in Congress proposed adding which women's rights activist to Mount Rushmore?

Susan B. Anthony lost her place to a rider on a spending bill, which said the money could go only to the heads already begun.

Which activist group led a 1971 occupation of Mount Rushmore to demand that a broken treaty be honored?

The American Indian Movement was protesting the US seizure of the Black Hills in 1877, after gold was found there.

Which film sequel hides a lost city of gold beneath Mount Rushmore?

National Treasure: Book of Secrets ends in a cavern under the monument, where Nicolas Cage's treasure hunter finds the golden city of Cíbola; in its plot the carving was a cover to hide the way in.