Mount Rushmore

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Mount Rushmore

Image:Mountrushmore.jpg

Image:LocMap-Black-Hills-SD.png

Designation National Memorial
Location Black Hills of South Dakota, United States
Nearest City Keystone, South Dakota
Coordinates 43° 52′ 44″ N, 103° 27′ 33″ W
Area 1,278.45 acres (1,238.45 federal)
517.37 hectares
Date of Establishment March 3, 1925
Visitation 2,037,820 (2004)
Governing Body National Park Service
IUCN category V (Protected Landscape/Seascape)

Mount Rushmore National Memorial, near Keystone, South Dakota, memorializes the birth, growth, preservation, and development of the United States of America.

Contents

Creation and Maintenance

Between 1927 and October 31, 1941, Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers sculpted the 60 foot (18 m) colossal busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 150 years of American history.

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 Kaercher GmbH & Co., 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.

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.

Geology

Image:Mt rushmore 07 27 2005.jpg 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 burried 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

Image:Air Force One over Mt. Rushmore.jpg

Film

  • The memorial was famously used as the location of the final chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest.
  • Mount Rushmore is featured in Team America: World Police as the Team America headquarters which was destroyed by Michael Moore's suicide bomb.
  • In the Roger Rabbit short Trail Mix-Up, Roger Rabbit and friends crash-land into Mount Rushmore, terrifying the presidents and destroying the memorial.
  • 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 a deleted scene from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Hikaru Sulu and Pavel Chekov get lost in the park, and it is shown that a fifth great American President has been added to the monument by the 2280s, an African-American woman.
  • In Mars Attacks!, the Martians in a UFO carve their faces into Mount Rushmore, replacing the Presidents' heads.
  • In one of the final scenes in Skins, Rudy Yellow Lodge throws a large container of red paint down the face of George Washington.
  • In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Rushmore Rumble", Mount Rushmore's George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are out of the memorial due to Dexter's and Mandark's technology to resurrect them. Dexter takes control of Abraham Lincoln's statue to fight Mandark's George Washington.
  • In the Pee-Wee's Playhouse episode "To Tell the Tooth", Jambi is vacationing at Mount Rushmore and is replacing Abe Lincoln's head.
  • In the Jackie Chan Adventures episode "The Rock", Jackie Chan fights a main villain on top of Mount Rushmore.
  • On Richie Rich, the so-called "Mt. Richmore"; an inexact portrayal of Mr. Rushmore has Richard, Regina and Richie carved on.

Print

  • 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 for an object that can be recognized as a product of Intelligent Design.

Video/Computer games

Image:Pilotwings64.jpg

  • In MECC's Number Munchers or Word Munchers, the green guy carves himself in an intermission.
  • In the graphical adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road, one of the main characters gets the opportunity to bungyjump from inside one of the memorial's noses.
  • In the Nintendo's flight simulator PilotWings 64 for Nintendo 64 Mount Rushmore makes an apparition but instead of Washington there is Nintendo's mascot, Mario. If it is hit by the player with the cannon it changes to Wario's faces.

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.

References

External links

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