60 Fun Facts About Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore is located in which US state?

It sits in Pennington County in the southwest corner of the state, about 25 miles from Rapid City.

The sculpture is about two miles southwest of which small town?

Keystone began as an 1880s gold-mining camp and now lives almost entirely on memorial visitors.

How high above sea level is the top of Mount Rushmore?

The highest point in the Black Hills, 3.7 miles away, tops out over 7,200 feet.

After the 1870s the Lakota knew the peak by a name that translates as what?

Before that it was Igmu Tanka Pahá, Cougar Mountain; the name change is tied to a vision of the Lakota holy man Black Elk.

In Lakota belief, who or what are the 'Six Grandfathers' the peak was named for?

North, south, east and west plus sky and earth: the same six directions honored in the Lakota pipe ceremony.

What was Charles E. Rushmore, for whom the mountain was named in 1885, doing in the Black Hills?

He made three or four trips in 1884 and 1885; decades later he donated $5,000 toward the carving that bears his name.

According to the story, who told Rushmore the peak had no name and would from then on be named after him?

The joke stuck locally for 45 years before it became official.

In which year did the US Board of Geographic Names officially recognize the name 'Mount Rushmore'?

By then Washington's face had already been under the drills for nearly three years.

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

Robinson was secretary of the South Dakota State Historical Society and wanted something to pull motorists off the new highways.

Which sculptor did Robinson approach first, before Borglum, only to find him ill and uninterested?

Taft was the Chicago sculptor behind the Fountain of Time; his refusal sent Robinson to Senator Peter Norbeck and then to Borglum.

Robinson's original plan called for carving which kind of figures?

Borglum rejected regional figures outright, arguing that only a national subject would justify the scale.

Where in the Black Hills did Borglum first intend to carve, before opposition stopped him?

The spires were also too thin and eroded to hold detailed faces; they have since become a rock-climbing destination along the Needles Highway.

Before Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum had been the original sculptor of which other giant rock carving?

That project was backed and partly funded by the Ku Klux Klan; Borglum quit it in a dispute and his work there was blasted away.

On first seeing the mountain, Borglum is reported to have said what?

He later gave the finished work its own grand nickname, the Shrine of Democracy.

Why did Borglum favor this particular peak, apart from its size?

The southern exposure means the faces are lit for most of the day, which is why morning is the classic photo time.

Carving officially began on October 4 of which year?

The dedication had been held that August, with the President on hand to make the first funding pledge.

How many years did the carving take, from 1927 to its end in 1941?

Only about six and a half of those years involved actual carving; the rest were lost to weather and money running out.

Which sitting president attended the August 1927 dedication ceremony?

Coolidge was spending the summer at a 'summer White House' in the Black Hills and rode up on horseback in cowboy boots.

Roughly how many workers helped carve the memorial?

Many were unemployed local miners, and Depression wages made the dangerous work attractive.

How many workers died during the fourteen years of construction?

Given men hanging from cables beside dynamite blasts, the record is remarkable; some later suffered from silicosis caused by granite dust.

About what percentage of the mountain was carved using dynamite?

Skilled blasters could remove rock to within a few inches of the finished surface before the drills took over.

Which technique used closely drilled holes to weaken granite for removal by hand?

After that, workers smoothed the faces with a hand facer, or bumper tool, leaving a surface as smooth as a sidewalk.

Workers were lowered over the 500-foot face on steel cables in a seat known as what?

Winch operators at the top could not see the men below, so 'call boys' relayed hand signals from the edge.

How many stairs did the workers climb each morning to reach the mountaintop time clock?

A cable-car tram carried tools and later some workers, but the stairs remained the daily commute.

According to one worker quoted by the National Park Service, what was his daily wage on the mountain?

Skilled drillers earned about a dollar an hour, roughly double what the local mines paid in the 1930s.

Borglum's models were built at what scale to the finished mountain?

Measurements were transferred with a 'pointing system': a boom and plumb line on the model, then a twelve-times-larger rig on the mountain.

How tall is each of the four carved heads?

That is roughly the height of a six-story building; a man of that proportion would stand about 465 feet tall.

How tall is the nose on the Washington head?

Roosevelt's head is slightly smaller than Washington's and Lincoln's slightly taller.

How wide is each eye on the sculpture?

Borglum carved a shaft of granite in each pupil so it catches the light and gives the eyes a lifelike glint.

About how much rock was blasted off the mountainside in total?

Most of it still lies in a talus heap at the base of the carving, which the Park Service has deliberately left in place.

What was the total cost of the project when it ended in 1941?

The 1928 authorization act had promised only up to $250,000 in federal matching funds; the rest had to be pried loose year by year.

What share of Mount Rushmore's funding came from federal legislation pushed by Norbeck and Williamson?

Norbeck, a former South Dakota governor, also created Custer State Park and laid out the Needles Highway.

Which face was completed and dedicated first, on July 4, 1934?

It is the only figure with any detail below chin level, a hint of the waist-length statues Borglum never got to finish.

Which face was the last to be dedicated, in 1939?

He was the most controversial choice, having died only twenty years earlier, and is tucked deepest into the rock.

Why was Thomas Jefferson's face blasted off and re-carved on Washington's other side?

About eighteen months of work was dynamited away in 1934; Jefferson's finished face was dedicated in 1936.

Per the National Park Service, which of the four presidents 'embodies the preservation of the nation'?

Washington stands for the country's birth, Jefferson its expansion and Roosevelt its development.

Which 1803 land deal makes Jefferson the symbol of the nation's expansion on the mountain?

The 1803 deal with France doubled the size of the country and included the land the memorial now stands on.

Who took over the project when Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941?

Gutzon died of an embolism after surgery; his son declared the work finished that October and became the memorial's first superintendent.

How far down were the presidents originally supposed to be carved?

Borglum's model showed Washington's coat lapels and Jefferson's hand; the money simply ran out.

How far into the mountain did workers get on the Hall of Records before work stopped in 1939?

Borglum imagined a grand stairway climbing the mountain to a vault holding America's founding documents.

What was placed inside the unfinished Hall of Records in 1998?

The panels tell the story of the memorial and the country, sealed under a granite capstone for future civilizations to find.

In which year did the National Park Service take over jurisdiction of Mount Rushmore?

Borglum resented the oversight and clashed with park engineers for the rest of his life.

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

No formal dedication had ever been held for the finished work in 1941, with the country weeks from entering World War II.

How many visitors does the memorial attract each year?

The 2022 count was 2,440,449, most of them in June, July and August.

How fast is the granite of the sculpture estimated to erode?

Borglum added an extra three inches to the faces to allow for it, so the details should survive for many thousands of years.

How old is the granite the presidents are carved from?

It is the same Harney Peak granite that forms the Needles and the highest summits of the Hills.

Which 1868 agreement granted the Black Hills to the Lakota 'in perpetuity'?

The gold rush that followed Custer's 1874 expedition prompted the US to seize the Hills within a decade of signing.

How much did the Supreme Court award the Sioux Nation in 1980 for the Black Hills?

With interest the untouched fund has grown past a billion dollars; the Sioux continue to demand the land itself.

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 often seen at the memorial are not native. Where did they come from?

Six goats jumped the fence; their descendants now scramble across the granite below the presidents.

What is the primary tree in the Black Hills around the memorial?

The dark green of the pines seen from a distance is what gave the Black Hills their name.

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

Korczak Ziolkowski's design would stand 563 feet high; the completed face alone is 87 feet 6 inches, taller than the Rushmore heads.

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

The Interior Department refused to let anyone clamber over the presidents, so the chase was shot on a studio mock-up at MGM.

Fireworks displays were held at the memorial from 1998 to 2009. What did they leave behind?

Wildfire risk and the pollution ended the tradition, though a one-off display returned on July 3, 2020.

How long is the Presidential Trail loop that starts and ends at the Visitor Center?

It passes the Sculptor's Studio, built in 1939, where Borglum's plaster model and tools are still displayed.

What nickname did Borglum himself give the finished memorial?

The President repeated the phrase at the 1936 Jefferson dedication and it stuck in Park Service literature.

Which summit 3.7 miles from Mount Rushmore was renamed in 2016 from a name honoring General William Harney?

It was renamed in 2016 for the Lakota holy man whose vision is tied to the Six Grandfathers name.

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

When the work ended in 1941, the sculptors said the remaining rock was unsuitable for more carving, a view an engineering firm has since echoed.

Which group occupied Mount Rushmore in 1971 and renamed it 'Mount Crazy Horse'?

Lakota holy man John Fire Lame Deer planted a prayer staff on top, declaring a symbolic shroud over the faces until the treaties were honoured.

In 2009 the memorial was laser-scanned at high resolution as part of which international heritage project?

Electronic monitoring devices installed in 1998 already track movement in the sculpture to within 0.12 inches.