As "father of our country" and the nation's first president, George Washington earned his place as the foremost figure in the presidential portrait. Born in 1732 in Virginia, as a youth he surveyed what was then considered the western wilderness, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. At only 23 years ...

The hard granite of Mount Rushmore is among the oldest rock in the world. Geologists claim it will erode at a rate of one inch every 10,000 ...

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is as much a product of dreams and determination as it is the work of a talented sculptor.  The Father of Rushmore In 1923, Doane Robinson, the aging superintendent of the South Dakota State Historical Society, had a vision of a massive mountain memorial carved from stone ...

The Black Hills' name originates from the Sioux term paha sapa, or "hills of black," because the dense pine forests covering the hills appear black at a ...

Born in 1743 to Virginia planters, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence at age 33, giving the nation a plan for sover-eignty and freedom. Jefferson also served as governor of his native state, as minister to France and as secretary of state for four years under President Washington. ...

Mount Rushmore represents the largest work of art on Earth. Each face is 60 feet high, compared to the head on the Statue of Liberty, which is only 17 feet tall.  Amazingly, there were no deaths and only a couple of injuries during the entire period of carving at Mount ...

The only presidential selection to draw any measure of criticism was that of Theodore Roosevelt, the nation's 26th president.  Some academics argued that history had not yet judged the Roosevelt presidency (he had been dead only eight years). But Borglum believed Roosevelt's vision of America's role in the world community ...

Gutzon Borglum, a friend of the great French artist Auguste Rodin, was one of America's most successful artists before he even considered Mount Rushmore. His Mares of Diomedes was the first work by an American artist ever purchased by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has five statues ...

"The Great Emancipator," Abraham Lincoln, was born to impoverished parents in Kentucky's backwoods in 1809. Lincoln taught himself law, served in the Illinois Legislature, then gained a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1858, he challenged Senator Stephen Douglas and—through wit, wisdom and a series of historic ...

The Mount Rushmore Memorial encouraged another accomplished artist to carve a second colossal sculpture in the Black Hills. In 1948, seven years after work stopped on nearby Mount Rushmore, grand-scale carving began on the Crazy Horse Memorial. Sculptor Korczak Ziol-kowski (pronounced "Jewel-cuff-ski") had worked as an assistant to Gutzon Borglum ...

South Dakota's first inhabitants lived more than 9,000 years ago. Most of these nomadic tribes migrated with the massive herds of bison (commonly called buffalo) that roamed the grasslands of the Great Plains. Early hunters relied on the furry beasts for everything from meat, clothing and fuel for fire ...