South Dakota is officially known as the Mount Rushmore State in honor of the mountain carving of U.S. presidents in the Black Hills.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum.

The idea of creating a sculpture in the Black Hills was dreamed up in 1923 by South Dakota historian Doane Robinson, who wanted to find a way to attract tourists to the state. Robinson wanted it to feature American West heroes like Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. Borglum believed that the sculpture should have broader appeal and chose the four presidents.

The sculpture features George Washington (1732-1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). The four presidents were chosen to represent the nation's birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively.

The head of George Washington is 60 feet tall (18 m) with a nose that is 21 feet tall. Theodore Roosevelt's head is slightly smaller, Abraham Lincoln's is slightly taller. Each of the eyes on Mount Rushmore are about 11 feet wide. Each mouth is about 18 feet wide.

Construction began in 1927, and the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. After Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, his son Lincoln took over as leader of the construction project. The original design was a sculpture of each president down to their waists, but time constraints and lack of funding forced construction to end on October 31, 1941, after 14 years.

Ninety percent of the mountain was carved using dynamite. The powdermen would cut and set charges of dynamite of specific sizes to remove precise amounts of rock, followed by a process called "honeycombing", where workers drilled holes close together, allowing small pieces to be removed by hand. In total, about 450,000 short tons (410,000 t) of rock were blasted off the mountainside.

The image of Thomas Jefferson was originally supposed to appear in the area to Washington's right, but after nearly two years of work, the rock was found to be unsuitable. The partially completed face was "erased" from the mountainside using dynamite, and a new figure was sculpted to Washington's left.

Off-and-on for 14 years, men dangled precariously off the top of Mount Rushmore, seated in a bosun's chair and tethered only by a 3/8-inch steel wire to the top of the mountain. Remarkably, no one died.

In 1938, Borglum began blasting a secret room in the mountain behind the presidential heads. He envisioned a grand Hall of Records where America's greatest historical documents and artifacts could be protected and shown to tourists. He managed to start the project, but cut only 70 feet (21 m) into the rock before Congress found out and demanded that he stop using federal funds for the unapproved hall. In 1998, 57 years after his death, Borglum's vision for the Hall of Records was realized when porcelain tablets containing images and text from the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and biographies of the presidents were sealed in a vault inside the unfinished Hall.