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Mount Rushmore

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  Location: Keystone, South Dakota, U.S.A. (Continent of North America)
• Built by: Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, and after his death in 1941, his son Lincoln finished the project
• Date built: Construction was from 1927 to 1941 (about 81 years ago)
• How long to build: It took 14 years to build, and about 400 men worked on the sculptures
• Size: Each face is about 60 ft (18 m) high
• Weight: About 600 million lbs (272,155,422 million kg)
• They made it to attract tourists to the state of South Dakota. Today nearly 3 million people visit every year.
• The mountain was named after a New York lawyer named Charles E. Rushmore, who came to the area to check properties and mining claims while working for a mining company. Rushmore joked about having a mountain named after him to a local guide, and the guide said they never really had a name for it, and from then on, it was called Mount Rushmore.
• The faces depict U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
• George Washington (1789–1797, 1st president) was again Commander and Chief of the army during the American Revolutionary War. England was the head of the committee that wrote the constitution and is called the “Father of His Country.”
• Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809, 3rd president) signed the Louisiana Purchase, which gave the US most of its southern and middle territories, and wrote the Declaration of Independence.
• Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865, 16th president) led the country through the American Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation (freeing the enslaved people).
• Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909, 26th president) helped with the construction of the Panama Canal, dedicated about 200 million acres of land to the National Parks, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for helping with negotiation with the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905 war between Russia and Japan).
• The monument was carved into the side of a mountain called “The Six Grandfathers.” The land once belonged to the Lakota Sioux Tribe (A Native American group in the US). The tribe lost the mountain after the US government broke a treaty with them in 1877 (signed in 1868 between the two groups) after the government found gold there. The gold led to two famous battles between the Native Americans and the US Government, “Battle of Little Bighorn” and “Wounded Knee.”