Mount Rushmore

The name Mount Rushmore is used when referring to a huge carving on a granite cliff in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Mount Rushmore National Memorial shows the faces of four American Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Washington's head is as high as a five-story building and is to the scale of a human being 465 feet tall.

The American sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed Mount Rushmore and supervised most of its work. Workers obtained measurements for the figures by using models that were one-twelfth actual size. They used drills and dynamite to cut the figures from Mount Rushmore's granite cliff. Work on the memorial began in 1927 and continued over 14 years with a few lapses in work. Borglum died in 1941 before seeing the memorial completed, but his son finished the work.

Mount Rushmore is located in the mountains twenty-five miles from Rapid City. The memorial rises 5,725 feet above sea level and more than 500 feet above the valley. Mount Rushmore is taller than the Great Pyramid of Egypt and is part of the National Park System.

Facts for this post came from an article in World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 13, pp 887-888, that was critically reviewed by the National Park Service.