Mount Rushmore
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| Mount Rushmore National Memorial | |
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| IUCN Category V (Protected Landscape/Seascape) | |
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| Location: | South Dakota, USA |
| Nearest city: | Rapid City, SD |
| Coordinates: | 43°52′44″N, 103°27′33″W |
| Area: | 1,278.45 acres (5.17 km²) |
| Established: | March 3, 1925 |
| Visitation: | 2,037,820 (in 2004) |
| Governing body: | National Park Service |
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, near Keystone, South Dakota, is a United States Presidential Memorial that memorializes the birth, growth, preservation, and development of the United States of America.
Creation and maintenance
Between 1927 and October 31, 1941, Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers sculpted the 60 foot ( 18 m) colossal busts of Presidents (from left) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 150 years of American history. In 1937, a bill was introduced in Congress to add the head of Susan B. Anthony, but a rider was passed on an appropriations bill requiring that federal funds be used to finish only those heads that had already been started at that time.
Visitors to the memorial come primarily to view the granite sculpture itself, but also of interest is the Sculptor's Studio built in 1939 under the direction of the artist, Gutzon Borglum. Unique plaster models and tools related to the sculpting process are displayed there.
Recently, ten years of redevelopment work culminated with the completion of extensive new visitor facilities and sidewalks. These include a new Visitor Center and Museum and the Presidential Trail, a walking trail and boardwalk providing spectacular close-up views of the mountain sculpture. Maintenance of the memorial presents a unique challenge for conservators, sometimes requiring mountain climbing to remove lichens and to generally clean the memorial.
On July 8, 2005 Alfred Kärcher GmbH, a German manufacturer of cleaning machines, started a cleanup operation of the faces. The company offered to clean the faces for free. It is the first time in the memorial's history that the faces have been pressure washed.
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Ecology
The memorial serves as home to many animals and plants representative of the Black Hills of South Dakota. The geologic formations of the heart of the Black Hills region are also evident at Mount Rushmore, including large outcrops of granite and mica schist.
The rock formation is carved on a sacred Lakota Native American site. A Crazy Horse Memorial, begun in 1948, is currently being carved out of a rockface nearby in South Dakota.
Coniferous trees surround most of the monument, which shades the trails from the hot South Dakota sun.
Geology
The memorial is carved on the northwest margin of the Harney Peak granite batholith in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The batholith magma was intruded into the pre-existing mica schist rocks during the Precambrian about 1700 million years ago. The granite is made of fine-grained minerals typical of granitic rocks including quartz, feldspar, muscovite and biotite. Fractures in the granite were filled (and sealed) by pegmatite dikes. The light colored streaks in the presidents' foreheads are due to these dikes. The Black Hills granites were exposed to erosion during the late Precambrian, but were buried by sandstones and other sediments during the Cambrian Period. The area remained buried throughout the Paleozoic Era, but were exposed again to erosion during the tectonic uplift about 50 million years ago. The Black Hills area was uplifted as an elongated geologic dome which towered some 20,000 ft. (6 km) above sea level. The subsequent natural erosion of this mountain range set the stage for the man-made carvings by stipping the granite of the local area of the overlying sediments and the softer adjacent schists. The contact between the granite and darker schist is viewable just below the bust of Washington.
Geology controlled the site selection by Borglum because:
- it was smooth, homogeneous fine-grained granite,
- its 5,725-foot height dominated the surrounding terrain, and
- it faced the sun most of the day. (National Park Service)
Appearances
Film
- The memorial was famously used as the location of the final chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest (the closeups were shot on a set).
- Mount Rushmore is featured in Team America: World Police as the Team America headquarters which was destroyed by Michael Moore's suicide bomb.
- In Superman II, General Zod and his partners in crime deface the memorial, using their superpowers to replace three of the busts with their own faces and wipe out the fourth.
- In Mars Attacks!, the Martians in a UFO carve their faces into Mount Rushmore, replacing the Presidents' heads.
- In the Family Guy episode " North by North Quahog", Peter and Lois are chased down the monument by Mel Gibson after stealing a copy of his new movie, "Passion Of The Christ 2: Crucify This" in a spoof of the chase scene from Hitchcock's " North by Northwest".
Music
- Deep Purple's album, In Rock, has the cover inspired by Mount Rushmore: it depicts the five members' faces instead of the four presidents.
- Mount Rushmore was a 1960s rock music band.
- In the Red Dwarf novel Better Than Life, Dave Lister finds Mt Rushmore (half-buried) on a planet entirely covered with garbage, and realises he is in fact back on Earth. The mountain has had a fifth face carved into it: that of "possibly the greatest American President of all time, Elaine Salinger".
- William Dembski uses the Mt. Rushmore Memorial as an example of an object that can be recognized as a product of Intelligent design.
- In Wildstorm Comics, the alien superhero Mr. Majestic has his secret base inside Mount Rushmore.
- In DC Universe, specifically Young Justice, the All Purpose Enforcement Squad has its secret base inside Mount Rushmore.
Administrative history
Congress authorized the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission on March 3, 1925. The memorial was transferred to the National Park Service on July 1, 1939. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.