City of Presidents ~ Rapid City, South Dakota

Last summer on our trip out West we drove through Rapid City and took a little time to find all of the President statues. They stand on downtown street corners all within a few blocks of each other.

Back in 1999 a local man named Don Perdue proposed the idea and formed a nonprofit foundation "City of Presidents" whose sole purpose is to raise funds for each sculpture. In 2000 the first four presidential statues were installed. Over the next 10 years six different artists created the remaining presidents (43 total to date).

With a combination of driving and walking, we found each one, except for Nixon who was off site at the time due to construction. (His photo was pulled from the internet.)

Here they are in alphabetical order.

Adams, J

Adams, JQ

Arthur

Buchanan 

Bush, GHW

Bush, GW

Carter

Cleveland

Clinton

Coolidge

Eisenhower

Fillmore

Ford

Garfield

Grant

Harding

Harrison, B

Harrison, W

Hayes

Hoover

Jackson

Jefferson

Johnson, A

Johnson, LB

Kennedy

Lincoln

Madison

McKinley

Monroe

Nixon

Obama

Pierce

Polk

Reagan

Roosevelt, F

Roosevelt, T

Taft

Taylor

Truman

Tyler

Van Buren

Washington

Wilson

Each bronze sculpture is life-size. matching height and weight of each president (except for Taft who was slimmed down). Some likenesses are better than others, and some photos are better than others due to the sunny weather. But it was great fun finding them all.

The Foundation decided to not install the next president until he or she is out of office or not politically active.

Mount Rushmore - September 2011

We've all seen pictures of it and yet it is still stunning to see in person.  The sixty foot sculptures were begun in 1927 and completed in 1941. The National Park is a major tourist destination and the requisite shops and museums have understandably built up around it.

You can't climb it (unless you can wrangle an invite from the Park

Superintendant who takes select people up to the top of the presidents'

heads). When I asked a guard about climbing it, he was quite short with me and stated that all climbing was prohibited. They won't tell you about the private tours.

We can probably thank Alfred Hitchcock for what must be a common

and irritating question. Not even Cary Grant, et al, were permitted to climb it in "North by Northwest" but filmed the now classic scene in a movie studio.

We had lunch in the restaurant with the view and tried to picture Grant

and Eva Marie Saint in the same place (we couldn't find any memorabilia).

 

There is a lot of information about the sculptor, Gutzan Borglum, and the carving of the mountain, with old photographs, molds, etc., and you can easily spend at least half a day here.

 

But the best thing is the mountain itself. It gleams white in the distance (from a recent power washing) and this profile stops people in the road.

Sadly, this was a sacred place for Native Americans and there are now four white men carved into the mountain. That's what we do. Come for the carvings but appreciate the history.