This mountain is located in the Black Hills. In the years 1927-1941 were carved there the faces of four presidents of the United States: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The sculptor responsible for the project was an American artist – Gutzon Borglum.


From left, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln


On October 15, 1966 Mount Rushmore was entered into the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
In 1991, George HW Bush made an official unveiling of Mount Rushmore.
The statue was carved to commemorate the greatest U.S. presidents. This is a big tourist attraction that brings great financial benefits.

                                                               Entry for visitors

In an 1868 treaty the U.S government said the Black Hills belonged to the Native Americans. The Black Hills had long been sacred to the Sioux.

In 1874 General George Custer violated the treaty by leading his troops into the Black Hills. On his return, Custer claimed the Black Hills where filed with gold, which resulted in further violation of the treaty.
We should remember that this monument is not only a commemoration of U.S. presidents, but also a sad story of Native Americans’ struggle.

“To counter the white faces of Rushmore, in 1939 Sioux Chief Henry Standing Bear invited sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who worked briefly at Rushmore, to carve a memorial to the Sioux nation in the Black Hills. Perhaps wary of Borglum's troubles with financial administrators, Ziolkowski personally bought a mountain top with a granite ridge and financed the entire project privately. The statue, envisioned as a freestanding sculpture of the great Sioux chief Crazy Horse, will be much larger than any of the Rushmore figures. Korczak Ziolkowski died in 1982, but his family continues to work on this awesome undertaking; Crazy Horse's face was completed and dedicated in 1998. Although the subject of this work addresses one aspect of Rushmore's offenses, the land is still considered Sioux property, and the mountain that the Ziolkowskis are carving is still sacred. The Crazy Horse monument is not without its own dissenters and critics.”

Autor: Damian Chodyra