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South Dakota is known as the Mount Rushmore State due to the presence of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. The massive memorial to four American presidents, completed in 1941, quickly became an icon of American culture and patriotism. The state officially adopted the nickname in 1983, and the state flag was changed in 1993 to reflect the official nickname.
South Dakota, a state in the north central continental United States, is known as Mount Rushmore State. This stems from the presence of Mount Rushmore National Memorial near the city of Keystone in western South Dakota. This massive memorial to four American presidents, completed in 1941, features their faces and partial busts, each 60 feet (18 m) tall and carved from the granite of Mount Rushmore. Famous even before its completion in 1941, once finished, this memorial quickly became an icon of American culture and patriotism and earned the state of South Dakota much fame.
The Mount Rushmore National Memorial was commissioned and begun in 1927. Gutzon Borglum was the sculptor on this massive tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, and he employed a crew of more than 400 workers to transform the mountain face. Once completed, the monument was dedicated as a National Memorial and was eventually placed under the oversight of the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior.
The huge sculpture was instantly popular with American citizens, and the state of South Dakota quickly became known colloquially as the Mount Rushmore state. It has gained popularity over the years. During the first year after completion in 1941, more than 300,000 people visited the site and today more than 2,000,000 people visit the memorial each year.
Beginning in 1909, the state of South Dakota officially adopted the moniker Sunshine State and a new state flag incorporating this moniker. After Mount Rushmore’s completion, the nickname, though unofficial, quickly became the state’s Mount Rushmore. This transition was accelerated by Florida, which had also come to be known as the Sunshine State.
In 1983, the South Dakota legislature passed a measure officially changing the state’s nickname to Mount Rushmore State, and it was quickly signed into law. While this had been the unofficial nickname for many years, it has since become official. The flag, however, kept the original design, which, although modified in the 1960s, still proclaimed South Dakota as the Sunshine State. In 1993, the legislature finally rectified this inconsistency and changed the law describing the official state flag. From then on, the state flag reflected the official nickname and bears the phrase “The Mount Rushmore State.”
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