Mount Rushmore National Memorial | Visit Rapid City

Mount Rushmore is one of the most iconic places in America. Park Ranger Blaine Kortemeyer shares the history of the memorial, commonly missed experiences and more that you should explore during a visit!

Learn More: https://bit.ly/3Krv8V8

Lakota Interpreters:
Darrell Red Cloud (decedent of Chief Red Cloud)
Sequoia Crosswhite (descendant of Chief War Eagle and Chief Swift Cloud)

Video Transcription:

You can't understand it until you're here.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial was created to represent the first 150 years of the nation's history, represented by these four gentlemen on the sculpture. Gutzon Borglum chose who would be part of the sculpture and why they would be there. Washington: birth of the nation, Jefferson: the expansion & innovation of the Louisiana Purchase, Theodore Roosevelt for his conservation ethics; that was not the real reason but it's actually the Panama Canal was the reason why Borglum chose Roosevelt for the mountain and of course Lincoln is for the preservation of the nation through the Civil War. He chose these four for those reasons.

When people approach the memorial for their first time as they walk through the Avenue of Flags, the individuals are draped with the history of the country as each flag represents, there are 57 because we've got the districts, commonwealths and territories in the United States as well, represented in their flag. The experience crescendo's on the Grandview Terrace and at any given time in the summer there can be four to seven hundred people on the Grandview Terrace, but yet each individual group of people are experiencing the memorial uniquely and individually. It's the power of that sculpture, the uniqueness that human beings took this thing and made something else out of it. The power of Rushmore transforms lives on the Grandview Terrace.

The ranger talks here at the memorial occur year-round and each one of the individual interpreters create their own presentations. We don't hand presentations to you and say you will present this. No. That's not what we're about. We're about helping the individual interpreter create their own message that's guided by the overall themes of the memorial so that each individual interpreter can create unique programming because they're all, we are all unique people.

Now prior to this being named Mount Rushmore back in the 1880s this mountain was known as the Six Grandfathers by the Lakota people. So incorporating the culture of the indigenous peoples here is something that we do. Four days a week we have Lakota interpreters, storytellers, and musicians on the property out at the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota heritage village. They're here just interacting with visitors telling the stories of the indigenous peoples around this country around this area, representing their cultures very well as we collectively attempt to continue the perspective, the culture because the cultures continue to expand and thrive. When they see the presence of the sculpture and that interaction between the human being and the power of the place, opens people's hearts and minds and then we're allowed to, if they come on a talk, interject perspectives that they've never heard before, both good and not so good, about the four and other things but telling the truth is vitally important.

So the experiences here at the memorial are wide and varied. Some things that unfortunately some people miss, one of them is the visitor center. When you're standing on the Grandview Terrace, that's the roof of the visitor center. People you know, it's just foreign to think that you're standing on the roof of something right?

The presidential trail. Again it starts and ends on the Grandview Terrace and people don't know it's there, and the views along the presidential trail are so unique as you look up at the sculpture from a different perspective, a different vantage point, that's cool. Plus as you walk down the avenue and you get to the parking structure just before you cross that first street, the view of the plains from here is amazing. On a good day you can see Badlands formations on the horizon to the southeast. It's like nothing anybody's ever seen before.

The evening lighting ceremony, the number one attended program in the entire national park service. Every night of the summer starting the Friday after Memorial Day weekend, all the way through the end of September we hold a presentation that begins with a 10-minute park ranger talk and again they create their own stuff followed by a 20-minute movie. At the end of the movie the audience is prompted to stand and sing the national anthem as the interpreter throws the lights on the sculpture. At the conclusion of that, the park ranger takes stage again and invites the veterans in active duty and those who've lost a loved one in military conflict to take stage to be recognized and also retreat the colors, take the flag down, and that is the end of every day all summer long here at the Memorial.