September 9, 2021

MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

13000 SD-244, Keystone, SD 57751

“Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a massive sculpture carved into Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. Completed in 1941 under the direction of Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln, the sculpture's roughly 60-ft.-high granite faces depict U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The site also features a museum with interactive exhibits.” ― Google

There is nothing quite like rounding the corner along the road in Mount Rushmore National Park and seeing the gigantic stone ediface of the four presidents in front of you. The memorial itself was just as I remembered it from my visit with my family when I was in sixth grade, and the grandeur hasn’t diminished over the past 50+ years.

I spent about three hours beginning early in the morning taking photos, admiring the view, and exploring the exhibits. I took the .6-mile President’s Trail which takes you closer to the base of the mount. A good reminder, if you go down you have to go back up to get to where you started, I had to stop several times on the way back up, and I wasn’t the only one. I treated myself to Thomas Jefferson Vanilla Ice Cream at 10:30 am as a reward for finishing the trip. Jefferson is credited with the first known recipe of ice cream recorded by an American, and the memorial’s restaurant/snack bar capitalizes on that fact.

The presentation in the Sculptor’s Workshop was interesting. Here you find a scale model that Borglum and his crew used to create the memorial. The model shows the original intent was to have more of the bodies of the presidents carved into the mountain. However, Borglum died while trying to secure more funds from Congress to finish the memorial, so when his son took over the project with America on the verge of entering WWII, Lincoln Borglum declared the memorial finished, and thus we have the memorial you see today.

I left midday and returned in the evening to watch the patriotic illumination ceremony. The program started after dark with a ranger giving about a 12 minute talk on what Freedom meant to her, followed by a video paying tribute to Freedom and explaining why Borglum chose the four presidents he did to be on the memorial. Near the end of the video the song “America the Beautiful” played and everyone stood out of respect, and then just before the end of the song the memorial was illuminated, prominently displaying the four presidents. It was almost a breath-taking moment. Following the video, we were asked to sing the National Anthem, which was followed by the retiring of the U.S. flag on the stage. For this part of the ceremony, veterans were asked to come to the stage to help and be honored. On this night close to 50 men and women took the stage to much applause from the audience. After the ceremony I sat and admired the memorial, and then got my tripod and took some night photos. Editorial comment: the ranger’s remarks were fitting for the ceremony, however, the reaction from several in the audience to some of the lines in the speech made me a little uncomfortable. I am certain what I heard was not interpreted the same way by some of the others in the audience, and it really bothered me.