Mount Rushmore is Gutzon Borglum’s monumental sculpture of four U.S. presidents carved into South Dakota’s Black Hills.
The faces depict George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Construction began in 1927 and continued until 1941, when work stopped because funding had ended; the planned bodies and additional inscriptions were never completed.
The carvings are about 18 metres high and were cut into Mount Rushmore’s granite using drilling, blasting, and finishing work. Borglum died in March 1941, and his son Lincoln Borglum supervised the final work. The site is both a major American landmark and a subject of debate concerning Indigenous land, the Black Hills, and the displacement of the Lakota people.