Mount Rushmore takes about an hour. That’s the honest answer and it disappoints people who’ve driven a long way. The trick is to stop thinking of it as the destination and start thinking of it as one stop in the Black Hills, which is one of the more underrated corners of America.
Two hours east of the Black Hills is Badlands National Park, which is stranger and, I’d argue, better.
Rushmore, briefly and honestly
Four presidents, 18 metres tall each, carved between 1927 and 1941 by Gutzon Borglum and around 400 workers, mostly using dynamite.
Entry to the memorial itself is free. Parking costs about $10 and is valid for the year.
What to do: walk the Avenue of Flags to the viewing terrace, then do the Presidential Trail, a half-mile loop with stairs that takes you right under the faces. Most visitors skip it and it’s the best part. The sculptor’s studio has the original scale model and is worth ten minutes.
The evening lighting ceremony runs late May to September and is genuinely moving if you’re American and mildly interesting if you aren’t.
The history is complicated and worth knowing
The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota, and were guaranteed to them by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Gold was found in 1874, the treaty was broken, and the land was seized.
In 1980 the Supreme Court ruled the seizure illegal and awarded compensation. The Lakota have refused the money, which now sits in a trust worth over a billion dollars, because accepting it would mean relinquishing the land claim.
Borglum, the sculptor, also had documented ties to the Ku Klux Klan through his earlier work at Stone Mountain.
None of that means don’t go. It does mean the site is more complicated than the postcard, and the visitor centre now addresses some of it.
Crazy Horse is 25 minutes away
A mountain carving of the Lakota leader Crazy Horse, begun in 1948 and still unfinished. When complete it will be by far the largest sculpture on Earth — the face alone is bigger than all four Rushmore heads.
It’s privately funded and takes no federal money, which is why progress is slow. Entry is around $30 per car, which people find steep for something you view from a distance.
Worth knowing: it’s also contested. Some Lakota support it; others object that carving a sacred mountain is a poor way to honour a man who was never photographed and asked not to be memorialised.
Custer State Park is the actual highlight
This is where I’d spend a full day. It’s a state park, not national, and it’s excellent.
The Wildlife Loop Road, 18 miles through open grassland with a free-ranging herd of around 1,400 bison. You will be stopped by bison in the road. That’s the experience.
Needles Highway — 14 miles of granite spires and tunnels so narrow you fold the mirrors in. Not for large vehicles.
Iron Mountain Road — pigtail bridges and tunnels deliberately aligned to frame Mount Rushmore as you drive through them. Genuinely clever.
Sylvan Lake — the prettiest spot in the Black Hills and the trailhead for Black Elk Peak, the highest point east of the Rockies at 2,207 metres.
Park entry is around $20 per vehicle for seven days.
▶ Watch This Before You Go
Badlands is the one people underestimate
Two hours east and a completely different landscape — layered rock spires and canyons eroded out of an ancient seabed, in bands of red, yellow and grey.
Badlands Loop Road (Highway 240) is 39 miles with a dozen overlooks. Pinnacles and Yellow Mounds are the best.
Notch Trail — 2.4km with a log ladder up a cliff. The best short hike in the park.
Door and Window Trails — short boardwalks straight into the formations.
Badlands is also an open hiking park — you’re allowed to walk anywhere, off-trail, which almost no national park permits. And it’s a Dark Sky park with astronomy programmes in summer.
Sunrise and sunset are when the rock does the thing it’s famous for. Midday is flat.
The other thing Badlands has going for it is fossils. This was a floodplain and then a seabed, and the erosion that carved the formations keeps exposing new material — sabre-toothed cats, ancient horses, rhinoceros relatives. There’s an active fossil preparation lab at the Ben Reifel Visitor Centre where you can watch palaeontologists working through the summer, and it’s free. Kids find it far more gripping than another overlook.
Everything else in the area
Wind Cave and Jewel Cave — two of the longest caves in the world, both near Custer. Tours book out in summer.
Deadwood — the old gold rush town, now mostly casinos, but Mount Moriah Cemetery has Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
Wall Drug — a drugstore that became a roadside empire through several hundred billboards. Absurd, free, and unmissable in the sense that you literally cannot miss the signs.
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site — a decommissioned Cold War silo and launch control centre near Badlands. Fascinating and free.
Practical bits
You need a car. Rapid City is the base and has the airport, about 30 minutes from Rushmore and 60 from Badlands.
Four days is right: two in the Black Hills, one in Badlands, one spare.
Best time is June to September. Note that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in early August brings several hundred thousand bikers to the area and accommodation prices go vertical. Check the dates and avoid them unless that’s why you’re coming.
Winter is cold and quiet, and many roads close. Needles Highway and parts of Iron Mountain shut for snow.
FAQ
Is Mount Rushmore worth the trip? On its own, no. As part of a Black Hills and Badlands trip, absolutely.
How long at Rushmore? One to two hours including the Presidential Trail.
Rushmore or Crazy Horse? Rushmore is finished and free to enter. Crazy Horse is more interesting as a story. Do both if you have the day.
Badlands in one day? Yes, comfortably. Drive the loop road, do Notch Trail, stay for sunset.
Any wildlife? Bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs and wild burros in Custer. Bighorns in Badlands.
