Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) urged Interior Secretary Doug Burgum this week to “explore the addition” of President Trump’s likeness to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, citing “the scale and scope of recent achievements,” including the president’s domestic policy megabill that Congress passed Thursday and his administration’s ongoing border security efforts.
“The legacy of Mount Rushmore cannot remain frozen in stone; it must evolve to reflect the full arc of American history, including its most recent and transformative chapter,” Ogles wrote in a post about his proposal on X.
The Department of Interior declined to comment on Ogles’s Mount Rushmore National Memorial expansion idea, but a spokesperson told The Hill that the agency “takes all correspondence from Congress seriously and carefully reviews each matter.”
In a letter to Burgum on Thursday, Ogles urged the Interior Department to start a feasibility study covering technical, legal and cultural concerns with input from the public and experts. Mount Rushmore has been a source of contention for some American Indian groups because it was built on sacred Lakota Sioux tribal land. About 2 million visitors flock to the national park each year.
“We understand that physical modifications to Mount Rushmore raise logistical and preservation questions, but this discussion should not be foreclosed based on past bureaucratic resistance or political discomfort,” Ogles wrote in his letter to Burgum.
He added, “While meeting the logistical challenges may require engagement with state and/or tribunal officials, the national benefit of promptly recognizing President Trump’s accomplishments in restoring American greatness makes doing so a priority, and the benefits of elevating the dignity and relevance of the site, thus increasing both its grandeur and its visitor traffic, will accrue to South Dakota, the Lakota Sioux and the broader area.”
The National Park Service (NPS) didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment, but an NPS official explained to The Black Hills Pioneer newspaper in 2020 that it would not be structurally possible to add another person to the massive mountain-side sculpture.
“The rock that surrounds the sculpted faces is not suitable for additional carving,” Mount Rushmore National Memorial Chief of Interpretation and Education Maureen McGee-Ballinger said at the time.
NPS has had a longstanding partnership with a rock mechanics engineering firm (RESPEC) to continuously study the structural stability of the sculpture.
“RESPEC supports our long-held belief that no other rock near the sculpted faces is suitable for additional carving,” McGee-Ballinger told the local newspaper. “RESPEC also believes that if additional work were undertaken it is possible that exposing new surfaces could result in creation of potential instabilities in the existing carving.”
In addition to Ogles’s appeal to Burgum, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has proposed legislation that would direct the Secretary of the Interior to “arrange for the carving” of Trump’s image on Mount Rushmore. The legislation hasn’t been brought up for a hearing.
Trump told The Hill in a 2019 interview that he couldn’t answer whether he thinks he should be added to the colossal carving, which was completed in 1941.
“If I answer that question, ‘Yes,’ I will end up with such bad publicity,” he said.
However, his desire to have his face alongside Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt has been previously revealed.
Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, at the time running for South Dakota governor, recalled in a 2018 interview with a Coyote State newspaper that during her first meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, he told her it was his “dream” to be immortalized on the monument someday.
“I started laughing,” Noem, at the time a Republican member of Congress, told the Argus Leader. “He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”
