The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial featuring a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore (Lakota: Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe Pahá, or Six Grandfathers Mountain) in the Black Hills, about 2 mi (3 km) southwest of Keystone, South Dakota, United States. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, named it the Shrine of Democracy, and oversaw the execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features 60-foot-tall (18 m) depictions of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, respectively chosen to represent the nation's foundation, expansion, development, and preservation. Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually to the memorial park which covers 1,278 acres (2.00 sq mi; 517 hectares).
Mount Rushmore is 3.7 mi (6.0 km) east-northeast of the summit of Black Elk Peak (formerly Harney Peak), the highest point in the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore is considered part of the Black Elk Range (formerly the Harney Range) in treatments that distinguish that subrange of the Black Hills. Its elevation at its highest point is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.
Borglum chose Mount Rushmore in part because of its southeast-facing direction and maximum exposure to sunlight. The carving was the idea of Doane Robinson, South Dakota's state historian. Robinson originally wanted the sculpture to feature American West heroes, such as Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. Borglum, arguing that the sculpture should be national in scope rather than regional, convinced them to choose the four presidents instead.
Peter Norbeck, U.S. senator from South Dakota, sponsored the project and secured federal funding. Construction began in 1927 and the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. After Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, his son Lincoln took over as leader of the construction project. Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist, but lack of funding forced construction to end on October 31, 1941, and only Washington's sculpture includes any detail below chin level.
The sculpture at Mount Rushmore was built on land that was taken from the Sioux Nation in the 1870s. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians that the taking of the Black Hills required just compensation and awarded the tribe $102 million. The Sioux have refused the money, and continue to demand return of the land. This conflict continues, leading some critics of the monument to refer to it as a "Shrine of Hypocrisy".
The peak that would later be known as Mount Rushmore is situated in the Black Hills, which has been inhabited by numerous indigenous groups over the centuries. The Ponca, Arikara, and Mandan were among the earliest recorded inhabitants, and were later displaced by the Kiowa, Plains Apache, and Shoshone. By 1800 those groups were supplanted by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota Sioux, with the Lakota becoming the majority in the area by 1850. The Lakota call the Black Hills Pahá Sápa and consider the entire region to be sacred ground, referring to the hills as wamakaognaka e'cante, "the heart of everything that is". The Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Native groups of the Northern Plains also recognize particular sites within the Black Hills as having sacred significance.
Mount Rushmore was originally known to the Lakota as Igmu Tanka Pahá (Cougar Mountain) due to the many cougars living in the area. After the 1870s, it came to be known as Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe Pahá (Six Grandfathers Mountain). The name referred to the six head-like knobs along the summit ridge, which came to be associated with Black Elk’s 1873 "Great Vision" of the Six Grandfathers. The Six Grandfathers are the spirits of the six directions (the four cardinal directions, plus above and below) in Lakota cosmology.
The United States government recognized the Black Hills as the exclusive territory of the Lakota in both the First and Second Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851 and 1868, respectively), creating the Great Sioux Reservation in which the Black Hills were situated. U.S. general George Armstrong Custer summited Black Elk Peak a few years later in 1874 during the Black Hills Expedition, which triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War of 1876. In 1877, the U.S. broke the Treaty of Fort Laramie and asserted control over the area, leading to an influx of settlers and prospectors.
Early English-language names for the later Mount Rushmore included "Cougar Mountain," "Sugarloaf Mountain," "Slaughterhouse Mountain," and "Keystone Cliffs". Among the early prospectors in the area was New York mining promoter James Wilson, who organized the Harney Peak Tin Company, and hired New York attorney Charles E. Rushmore to visit the Black Hills and confirm the company's land claims. Rushmore visited the area on three or four trips over the span of 1884 and 1885. During one of these visits, Rushmore was traveling near the base of the peak and, impressed with it, asked his guide, Bill Challis, the mountain's name; Challis replied that the mountain did not have a name, but that it would henceforth be named after Rushmore. The name "Mount Rushmore" continued to be used locally, and was officially recognized by the United States Board of Geographic Names in June 1930.
By the 1920s, South Dakota had become a U.S. state and was a popular destination for automobile travelers visiting the Black Hills National Forest, Wind Cave National Park, and Needles Highway. In 1923, the Secretary of the South Dakota State Historical Society, Doane Robinson, who would later come to be known as the "Father of Mount Rushmore", sought to boost tourism to South Dakota through the construction of a large monument in the Black Hills. Robinson initially approached sculptor Lorado Taft, but Taft was ill at the time and uninterested in Robinson's project. Robinson next sought the help of then-U.S. Senator Peter Norbeck, who had established Custer State Park when he was Governor in 1919. Norbeck cautiously supported Robinson's plan, and Robinson began campaigning for it publicly. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader was also an early proponent of Robinson's plan.
In 1924, Robinson read about the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia, that had been underway since 1915. On August 20, 1924, Robinson wrote to Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of the Stone Mountain memorial, asking him to travel to the Black Hills region to determine whether the carving could be accomplished. Borglum had been having disagreements with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, and on September 24, 1924, travelled to South Dakota to meet Robinson.
Robinson's plan had some support in South Dakota, but opposition was particularly strong in the Black Hills area. Many people there opposed the project on conservationist grounds, wishing to leave the appearance of the area unaltered. Many others opposed it because they did not want an influx of tourism to the area. Cora Babbitt Johnson, editor of the Hot Springs, South Dakota newspaper, the Hot Springs Star, was particularly outspoken in her opposition to the planned sculptures. Others opposed to the plan included the Black Hills Federation of Women's Clubs and the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan. Through 1924, predominant opinion in South Dakota was either opposed or indifferent to the memorial project, and it was only through considerable lobbying on the part of Robinson and Borglum that the project began to gain support in early 1925. South Dakota Governor Carl Gunderson also leaned toward opposition to the project, but informed Senator Norbeck that he would not actively oppose it.
Although many Lakota and other Native Americans later came to oppose the Mount Rushmore sculptures as a desecration of their sacred land during the modern era of the Native American civil rights movement, Native groups did not openly protest the monument at the time of its planning and construction. Indeed, Black Elk visited the site in 1936 while it was still under construction.