Mount Rushmore at Golden Hour

The mountain had a name long before it had faces. The Lakota name translates as Six Grandfathers, for the spirits of the six directions, and it was later attached to the six head-like knobs along the summit ridge. The Black Hills around it are sacred ground to the Lakota.

The name on the maps came from a visitor. Charles E. Rushmore, a New York attorney, made trips to the Black Hills in 1884 and 1885. His guide, Bill Challis, told him the peak had no name and that it would be called after him. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names made Rushmore official in June 1930.

The granite is about as permanent as stone gets: it wears away roughly an inch every 10,000 years. The memorial's highest point stands 5,725 feet above sea level.

This version steps back and lets the afternoon do the work. The four heads sit in the upper half of a wide frame, lit gold across their faces, with Roosevelt's mustache and Lincoln's beard picked out in shadow and great banks of cloud glowing orange and pink beyond them. Dark pines climb the rubble slope below, and rough stone breaks the ridge at the left.