Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 6, 2006

Mount Rushmore is a United States presidential memorial that represents the first 150 years of the history of the United States of America with the 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of former U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The entire memorial covers 1,278 acres (5.17 km²), and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level. It is managed by the National Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior. The memorial attracts around 2 million people annually. The mountain, known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, was renamed in 1885 after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer. The project of carving Mount Rushmore originally started with the purpose of increasing tourism in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. After long negotiations involving a Congressional delegation and President Calvin Coolidge, the project received Congressional approval. Under the direction of sculptor Gutzon Borglum, the carving started in 1927 and ended in 1941. (more...)