Mount Rushmore is located an hour away from Rapid City in South Dakota. It is well known for the carving of 4 famous presidents on the rock surface of the mountain. These 4 presidents are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Mount Rushmore attracts thousands of visitors from all the states each year, and thus it has a huge parking structure there.
We got to Mount Rushmore quite early around 8AM in the morning and there was still plenty of parking spaces. When we got off the car and went to the payment machine to get our parking ticket paid, the credit card was not working for the machine. The machine just couldn't process past the credit card authentication check. It was quite frustrating. Luckily we had cash on us and paid $10 for it.
After getting the parking ticket paid, we walked up the stairs and finally saw Mount Rushmore. It was an amazing sculpture work done by the people more than 50 years ago. We could not imagine how difficult this work must have been back in the days.
The hallway leading towards the auditorium in front of Mount Rushmore have many flags on both sides. These flags are the flags of all 50 states of United States and also flags of all the territories. Under the flag, it also listed the date of when the state or territory became part of United States.
We then went on the Presidential Trail. The trail led to us right beneath Mount Rushmore. The trail also has information boards that talk about the background of the 4 presidents on Mount Rushmore. We learnt a lot from this short hike. At the end of the trail, there was this sculpture center showing what the original plan was for carving the mountain. The original plan was much larger that includes full body size sculpture and also showing the important dates of each president on the rock. Unfortunately some part of the mountain was too fragile and part of the plan had to be scrapped.
As we went back to the auditorium, we went downstairs to go to the memorial hall. Inside the memorial hall, it showed how people carved the mountain back in the days. About 90% of the work was done by using dynamite. The entire mountain carving work took over 14 years. It was a crazy task.
The visit to Mount Rushmore was definitely memorable. We definitely learnt a lot about the history. We initially thought we could walk all the way up the mountain but that was not the case, which was a little disappointing.
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