The Black Hills in eastern South Dakota is the site of Mount Rushmore. Originally known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, the United States Board of Geographic Names officially named the mountain Mount Rushmore after Charles E. Rushmore, a New York lawyer, inquired about the name of the peak during an expedition in 1885.

The most recognizable feature of Mount Rushmore is the colossal granite carvings designed and built by Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum. Backed by a team of influential South Dakotan supporters, Borglum used jackhammers and dynamite to carve out the face of the mountain from 1927 to 1941. Upon completion of the project, the faces of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt decorated the side of mountain. Borglum’s massive sculptures honor the men that worked to establish, expand, preserve, and unify the United States.

Since 1868, the Lakota and other Native American tribes have disputed the United States’ claim to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. Prior to seizing the land from the Lakota and their allies at the end of the Great Sioux War of 1876, the Treaty of Laramie guaranteed their claim to the land. Recently, James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, recommended the United States return some land to Native American tribes, including South Dakota’s Black Hills and the Mount Rushmore monument. Despite the controversies surrounding the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore attracts over two million visitors annually

Researched, written, and narrated by University of West Florida Public History Student Spenser Andrade.