Mount Rushmore News

In the 1880s Keystone, South Dakota was a booming mining town. James Wilson was a New York mining promoter examining mining claims in the area. Wilson hired Charles E. Rushmore, a young New York attorney, to check on mining titles. Mr. Rushmore arrived in the area in 1885 representing the Harney Peak Consolidated Tin Company, LTD., located at Pine Camp just north of an “unnamed” mountain. Out traveling to examine claims, Rushmore passed by the unnamed mountain.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Environmentalists using park service rock anchors scaled Mount Rushmore on Wednesday and unfurled a banner along President Abraham Lincoln's face challenging America's leaders to stop global warming. Eleven people were charged with trespassing and the misdemeanor crime of climbing on Mount Rushmore National Monument, U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley said. They pleaded not guilty to all charges. The environmental group Greenpeace said in a statement that three of its members hung the banner on Mount Rushmore while other activists blocked access to the site.

Visitors to Mount Rushmore National Memorial on July 3 can expect to experience a wide variety of educational programs, patriotic tributes, and musical entertainment in celebration of Independence Day.  The memorial has planned a full day of events as many visitors arrive early in the morning to secure a parking spot and to find a place to watch the fireworks.  The festivities, including music and entertainment, begin at 1:00 pm on Friday, July 3 and culminate with the highly anticipated fireworks display at 9:20 pm.

A Christian legal group is appealing a federal judge's ruling that found Mount Rushmore National Memorial officials did not violate a Minnesota man's free-speech rights when they required him to get a permit before distributing religious materials at the memorial.

Superintendent Gerard Baker of Mount Rushmore National Memorial will speak at Beaver Meadows Visitor Center Auditorium in Rocky Mountain National Park on Thursday, Sept. 18 beginning at 7 p.m. The talk is open and free to the public. It is the second Randy Jones Memorial Lecture, jointly sponsored by the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West and the National Park Service.

There aren’t any signs pointing Mount Rushmore visitors to the newest exhibit. Superintendent Gerard Baker prefers that visitors explore the national memorial’s grounds and discover the Native American heritage village on their own. He isn’t going to tell them what to think of it, either, not like with the memorial’s museum that extols the greatness of the presidents enshrined on the mountain, and celebrates the feat of engineering that carved them into granite.

For the Lakota tribe of South Dakota, no ancestor is as important as Crazy Horse, who defeated General Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. So in 1948, when the tribe wanted to carve a likeness of the warrior astride a horse into a mountain in Black Hills National Forest, it hired sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who'd helped create parts of nearby Mount Rushmore.