Mount Rushmore Trivia
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59 free Mount Rushmore trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mount Rushmore is one of those places everyone can picture and almost nobody can explain. Why those four presidents? Why is Jefferson on the wrong side? What is the room hidden behind Lincoln's head, and why did the Lakota refuse a $100 million settlement for the land it sits on? This Mt Rushmore trivia quiz covers all of it in 59 questions: the 1885 naming after a New York lawyer, Doane Robinson's tourism scheme, Gutzon Borglum's dynamite-and-honeycomb carving method, the 400 workers who climbed 700 stairs a day, the dedication dates of each face, the unfinished Hall of Records, the mountain goats that are not supposed to be there, and the sculpture's Hollywood cameo in North by Northwest. It starts easy and ends with questions only a park ranger would get. Every answer is checked against the National Park Service's own pages or the memorial's Wikipedia article, and the sentence that proves it is quoted under each question.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Mount Rushmore is located in which US state?
South Dakota
South Dakota has since tied its identity to the carving: state law makes "The Mount Rushmore State" its official nickname.
Q 02Which small Black Hills town lies nearest to Mount Rushmore?
Keystone
Keystone lies just outside the memorial and has remade itself as a resort town for its millions of visitors.
Q 03Which of these lies about 25 miles northeast of Mount Rushmore?
Rapid City
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.
Q 04Which French sculptor befriended the young Gutzon Borglum while he studied art in Paris?
Auguste Rodin
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.
Q 05Mount Rushmore's Lakota name means Six Grandfathers; in Lakota belief, what are those grandfathers?
The spirits of the six directions
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.
Q 06Mount Rushmore is named after Charles E. Rushmore, a lawyer visiting from which city?
New York
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.
Q 07Which newspaper magnate's papers ran a 1934 contest to write a history of America for Mount Rushmore?
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst put up the prizes, but once the winners were chosen Borglum decided against carving any of their words into the mountain.
Q 08Years before Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum redesigned which part of the Statue of Liberty?
The torch
The torch. In 1916 Borglum redesigned it, replacing much of the original copper with stained glass.
Q 09Whose idea was it, in 1923, to carve a giant monument in the Black Hills to boost tourism?
State historian Doane Robinson
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.
Q 10Lincoln's face on Mount Rushmore was dedicated in 1937, on the 150th anniversary of which document's signing?
The Constitution
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.
Q 11The original 1923 plan for a Black Hills carving called for which kind of figures?
Old West heroes like Lewis and Clark
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.
Q 12Which Black Hills landmark was the first site proposed for the carving that became Mount Rushmore?
The Needles granite spires
The Needles granite spires proved too thin and eroded to hold giant figures, so Borglum declared he would carve a whole mountain instead.
Q 13Before Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum began which other giant rock carving?
Q 21About 90 percent of Mount Rushmore was carved with what?
Dynamite
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.
Q 22What did Mount Rushmore's carvers call drilling close-set holes to weaken the granite?
Honeycombing
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.
Q 23Mount Rushmore's carvers were lowered over the cliff on steel cables in a seat known as what?
A bosun chair
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 Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain
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.
Q 14Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, was the son of immigrants from which country?
Denmark
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.
Q 15Apart from its solid granite, why did Borglum pick Mount Rushmore's cliff for the carving?
It caught the most sunlight
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.
Q 16Mount Rushmore's carving ended in 1941, weeks before which event?
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor was attacked five weeks after the last drilling. With war looming, the unfinished carving had simply been declared complete as it stood.
Q 17Which British rock band put its own faces on Mount Rushmore for a 1970 album cover?
Deep Purple
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.
Q 18Which sitting president attended Mount Rushmore's dedication ceremony in August 1927?
Calvin Coolidge
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.
Q 19Which local trade supplied most of Mount Rushmore's carvers?
Mining
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.
Q 20How many workers died during the 14 years of carving Mount Rushmore?
Zero
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.
Q 24The Avenue of Flags leading to Mount Rushmore was created to mark which national occasion?
The US Bicentennial
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.
Q 25In which 1996 comedy do alien invaders re-carve Mount Rushmore with their own faces?
Mars Attacks!
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.
Q 26On Borglum's studio models for Mount Rushmore, one inch stood for what distance on the mountain?
One foot
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.
Q 27About what height is each of the four presidents' heads on Mount Rushmore?
60 feet
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.
Q 28Besides a long stairway, what carried tools and, later, workers to the top of Mount Rushmore?
A cable tramway
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.
Q 29Denied permission to film a chase on Mount Rushmore itself, where did Alfred Hitchcock shoot it?
On a Hollywood studio set
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.
Q 30Where is most of the rock cut from Mount Rushmore today?
At the mountain's foot
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.