Mount Rushmore reading Mount Rushmore Mount Rushmore National Memorial is centered around a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son Lincoln Borglum. The sculptures feature the heads of Presidents George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). The memorial park covers and is above sea level. South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into
Solon Borglum "The Stampede of Wild Horses", which were shown at the Paris Salon in 1898 and 1899, respectively. The year 1903 was a banner one for the artist. He had a one-man show of thirty-two small sculptures at the Keppel Gallery, New York. In his ground-breaking "History of American Sculpture" published that year, Lorado Taft devoted several pages to Borglum, and he was the subject of an entire chapter in Charles Caffin’s 1903 book "American Masters of Sculpture". In 1904 Borglum won the gold medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis. Borglum received several major public commissions, including