Mount Rushmore

A national memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota, featuring a colossal sculpture of the heads of four U.S. presidents carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore.

The Mount Rushmore National Memorial features a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills, about 2 miles (3 km) southwest of Keystone, South Dakota. The 60-foot (18 m) heads depict four presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, chosen to represent the nation’s foundation, expansion, development and preservation. The sculptor Gutzon Borglum oversaw the work from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum.

The memorial park covers 1,278 acres (517 hectares) and attracts more than two million visitors a year. The sculpture was built on land taken from the Sioux Nation in the 1870s. In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the tribe $102 million in compensation, but the Sioux have refused the money and continue to demand the return of the land.