What’s Inside Mt Rushmore?

Did you know that there is a secret, restricted access vault behind Abraham Lincoln’s head at Mount Rushmore?

This adventure marks one more in the series we are doing with the US national parks and monuments. So far we have done the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, WWII Monument, and the Hoover Dam. You’ll want to head on over to our YouTube page to watch those videos, where we get to access places the general public cannot.

We started the hike up to the monument on the Presidential Trail, which is about 0.6 miles long, and 422 stairs. At some point on the hike at an undisclosed location we veered off onto the secret trail to get to the secret vault. Don’t get any funny ideas about finding this secret trail, there is a lot of security up there, and they are armed.

Maybe it was just us, but we were a little underwhelmed at the size of the heads as we drove up to Mount Rushmore. As the hike continued we were definitely proved wrong and were very impressed that this was constructed in the late 1930s.

The idea for the vault is credited to a man named Guzton Borglum. He wanted to take The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, The Gettysburg Address, all other important government documents and store them in the vault as a record for future generations thousands of years from now. The vault was never finished, but records were placed on the floor of the vault's entry.

Under the granite capstone there lies a titanium box, in the titanium box is a teakwood box, and in that box, there are 16 porcelain enamel entablatures that contain the important documents. Etched on the granite capstone is a quote from Borglum.

“…let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.”

The vault goes about 76ft back into the mountain. It was so fascinating to see the tool marks in the walls from when the vault was being drilled and excavated.

Check out the full video to learn more about how the vault was made, and see some amazing views from the top of George Washington’s head.

Have you been to Mount Rushmore? What did you think? Also, let us know below what other national parks or monuments you would like us to see what’s inside of.