- Mount Rushmore (summitpost.org)
The Mount Rushmore climbing area is only the 2nd SummitPost.org “climbing” submission for South Dakota. This is not overly surprising due to the state’s remoteness but is astonishing regarding the quality of granite routes that can be found here. There are two popular climbing areas south of Rapid City, South Dakota in the Black Hills National Forest (1.2 million acres!): the Needles area, which is known for its ethics via trad climbing and limited fixed protection; and the Mount Rushmore climbs which feature many fully bolted sport routes.
- Mount Rushmore (Wikipedia)
The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore (Lakota: Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, or Six Grandfathers) in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed the sculpture, called Shrine of Democracy, and oversaw the project’s execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features the 60-foot-tall (18 m) heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, chosen to represent the nation’s birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively. Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually to the memorial park which covers 1,278 acres (2.00 sq mi; 5.17 km2). The mountain’s elevation is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.
