Mount Rushmore
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- National Park Service / U.S. Government Publishing Office
Mount Rushmore National Memorial: A History of the Memorial
Borglum’s original plan to carve the presidents below their heads and the broader history of the memorial’s design.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-I29-PURL-gpo79412/pdf/GOVPUB-I29-PURL-gpo79412.pdf - National Park Service
Doane Robinson
Robinson’s tourism-driven proposal, his choice of Western figures and the Needles, and his invitation to Borglum in 1924.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/doane-robinson.htm - National Park Service
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum
Borglum’s Stone Mountain dispute, destruction of his models, the resulting arrest warrant, his flight from Georgia, and his subsequent work on Mount Rushmore.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/gutzon-borglum.htm - Morning Register / Historic Oregon Newspapers
Georgia Withdraws Borglum Extradition Request
A contemporary March 1925 account of Georgia’s withdrawn extradition papers and the end of Borglum’s North Carolina habeas-corpus proceeding.
https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088115/1925-03-08/ed-1/seq-1/ - National Park Service
Why These Four Presidents?
Borglum’s explanation that Washington represented the nation’s birth, Jefferson its growth, Roosevelt its development, and Lincoln its preservation.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/why-these-four-presidents.htm - National Park Service
Mount Rushmore National Memorial Cultural Landscape
The mountain’s Lakota name, Six Grandfathers, and its cultural significance before the memorial was created.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-501080.htm - National Archives
Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)
The treaty establishing the Great Sioux Reservation and promising the land for the Sioux’s absolute and undisturbed use and occupation.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/fort-laramie-treaty - Oyez
United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians
The Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling that the 1877 taking of the Black Hills required just compensation.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1979/79-639 - PBS NewsHour
For Great Sioux Nation, Black Hills Can’t Be Bought for $1.3 Billion
The Sioux Nation’s refusal of the monetary award and the continuing dispute over the Black Hills.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-sioux-are-refusing-1-3-billion - National Park Service
Charles E. Rushmore
Rushmore’s 1925 letter recounting how his companions began calling the mountain Rushmore Peak.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/charles-e-rushmore.htm - U.S. Department of the Interior
Statement on H.R. 386, Mount Rushmore National Memorial
The United States Geographic Board’s formal recognition of the name Mount Rushmore in 1930.
https://www.doi.gov/ocl/hr-386 - National Park Service / U.S. Government Publishing Office
Mount Rushmore National Memorial: Historic Resource Study
Charles Rushmore’s $5,000 contribution to the memorial and the project’s early financial history.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-I29-PURL-gpo235824/pdf/GOVPUB-I29-PURL-gpo235824.pdf - National Park Service
Carving History
The use of bosun chairs, hand-cranked winches, call boys, dynamite, drilling, and finishing techniques during construction.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/carving-history.htm - National Park Service
The Workers
The nearly 400 people who worked on the memorial and the absence of construction fatalities during the fourteen-year project.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/the-workers.htm - South Dakota Department of Tourism
Surprising Facts About Mount Rushmore
The abandoned first location of Jefferson’s face and its removal with explosives after flaws were found in the rock.
https://www.travelsouthdakota.com/trip-ideas/surprising-facts-about-mount-rushmore - National Park Service
The Entablature Idea
Borglum’s abandoned plan for an enormous inscription explaining American history on the mountain.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/the-entablature-idea.htm - National Park Service
Hall of Records
Borglum’s plans for the chamber and the 1998 placement of a repository containing sixteen porcelain enamel panels.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/hall-of-records.htm - National Park Service
Mount Rushmore National Memorial: The Hall of Records
Borglum’s desire to explain the monument to the distant future, the unfinished hall, the 1939 funding restriction, and his final work from a Chicago hospital.
https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/476199 - Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission / U.S. Congress
Report of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission, 1939
The commission’s report to Congress on the Hall of Records excavation and the memorial’s progress.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-10348_00_00-004-0022-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-10348_00_00-004-0022-0000.pdf - National Park Service
Memorial History
Lincoln Borglum’s continuation of the work after his father’s death and the declaration of the project as complete on October 31, 1941.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/memorial-history.htm - National Park Service
Mount Rushmore Student Guide
The October 4, 1927 start date, construction methods, and the memorial’s final cost of $989,992.32.
https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/kidsyouth/student-guide.htm - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
CPI Inflation Calculator
The Consumer Price Index calculation used to express the memorial’s 1941 cost in approximate 2026 dollars.
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm