On September 17, 1937, the likeness of Abraham Lincoln was dedicated at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. The ceremony marked the dedication of the third presidential figure at the memorial, following George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum led the immense carving project, in which workers used carefully controlled dynamite blasts, drills, and hand-finishing techniques to shape Lincoln’s 60-foot granite face.
The date was chosen to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the United States Constitution. That connection gave the occasion added civic symbolism: Lincoln was widely remembered as the president who preserved the Union during the Civil War, making his image a powerful fit for a ceremony centered on the nation’s constitutional order and endurance.
Creating the monument required difficult and dangerous work. Crews operated high above the ground, often suspended by cables, as they removed rock and refined the presidents’ features. The Lincoln dedication represented both a major milestone in the construction of Mount Rushmore and a moment of interwar-era confidence in monumental public art, engineering, and national commemoration.
Today, Mount Rushmore remains one of the most recognizable symbols of the United States and a major part of the tourism landscape of the Black Hills. Its history is also inseparable from the fact that it was carved in the Black Hills—land sacred to the Lakota and central to ongoing discussions about Indigenous dispossession, memory, and public monuments.
Photo: Scott Catron (User: Zaui) • CC BY 2.5 Wiki Commons
