Mt. Rushmore is definitely the top tourist destination in South Dakota, and arguably one of the top tourist destinations in the entire country. It is an extremely popular image of America and its impressive qualities certainly required a lot of manpower, time, and effort. This monument will always be fascinating to tourists and residents alike, and there are some things beyond the stoic stone faces of the former presidents that most people don’t know about.

1. The entire project cost just under $1 million to make. Today, that would be about $14.4 million.
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2. Over 3 million people visit South Dakota to see Mt. Rushmore every year.
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3. Most of the carving was done by strategically placed dynamite, then later jackhammers and chisels.
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4. The name for Mt. Rushmore came from a visiting attorney from New York, checking out the local mining prospects back in the late 19th century. He asked locals if the mountain had a name; they said no, and named it after him.
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5. Thomas Jefferson was built twice. He was originally built on the other side of Washington. Over a year into construction, they decided the rock there was too weak, and blasted the face off with dynamite. You can sort of see here where it used to be.
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6. There is a cave behind the monument that was going to be called The Hall of Records and keep information about the monument itself and American History. It was never finished, as shown here.
Rachel.miller727/Wikimedia
7. The original design included torsos of each president, as shown in the original concept sculpture here. Due to lack of funding, they decided not to include them.
Rise Studios/LoC/Wikimedia
8. More movies have paid homage to Mt. Rushmore than to the Eiffel Tower and the Sphinx combined. Here it is shown in the movie North by Northwest.
Wikimedia
9. Workers had to climb over 500 steps each day to reach their job site. Most were miners in the area who had given up looking for gold, and very few of them knew anything about carving sculptures into rock.
Rise Studio/LoC/Wikimedia
10. The granite that the faces are carved out of is so durable only an estimated one inch of the monument will erode over the next 10,000 years.
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11. Over 800 million pounds of stone were removed during its creation.
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Some of these are pretty crazy! There are some other local legends that may or may not be facts, such as the original sculptor and overseer of the project, Gutzon Borglum, being the first to start official coffee breaks for workers after seeing the workers huddling around and drinking coffee early one winter day.

Did you learn anything new? If you’re interested in some more neat facts about other parts of South Dakota (including one about Mt. Rushmore listed here, too), check out this list of South Dakota facts and tidbits that they probably didn’t teach you about in school.

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