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Your Mount Rushmore Is Wrong

Beau Brummell · October 31, 2026
Everyone has a Mount Rushmore of something. Almost nobody knows what the real one means. It was never a top four.

Everyone has a Mount Rushmore. Of quarterbacks. Of steakhouses. Of Bond films.

They all mean "my top four."

That's not what Mount Rushmore is.

Gutzon Borglum didn't carve the four best presidents. He carved four chapters of American history.

Washington: the birth.

Jefferson: the growth. He doubled the size of the country with one purchase.

Roosevelt: the development. The Panama Canal.

Lincoln: the preservation. He held the Union together.

Bonus material for your next dinner:

The mountain is named after a New York lawyer. Charles E. Rushmore, 1885.

Jefferson was originally carved on Washington's other side. The rock was bad, so they moved him.

About 400 people spent 14 years up there, hanging off the face in bosun chairs and blasting it with dynamite. Not one of them died.

Carvers in bosun chairs on the face, during the 14-year job.
Carvers in bosun chairs on the face, during the 14-year job. Photo: National Park Service / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Tourists begged for the honeycombed scraps of granite. The hoist operator would refuse, then "reluctantly" sell his buddy's piece for $6, then call up the mountain: "Boys, send down another one!"

And the official explanation of why these four were chosen is sealed in a vault inside the mountain.

So go ahead, name your Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks.

Just know which one is the Louisiana Purchase.

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