(WYTV) It took 14 years to chisel the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, starting in 1927.
It carries the likenesses of four presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, all on a South Dakota mountainside.
Even before it was done, Americans were suggesting new people and we’ve never stopped.
Over the years, suggestions have come in for President Jimmy Carter, Thomas Edison, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Martin Luther King, Jr. and even Bart Simpson.
Here are some other noteworthy likenesses people would like to see carved on Mt. Rushmore.
Susan B. Anthony, who lobbied hard for women to vote. She did make it on a coin.
World War II hero and former president Dwight D. Eisenhower. The push for him began in 1960, the final year of his presidency.
In the nationwide grief following his assassination in 1963, some Americans believed John F. Kennedy should be up there.
Two months before his death in 1977, Elvis Presley gave one of his last concerts at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center so, naturally his fans said Elvis should be carved in stone.
Well before his death in 2004, people were talking about carving Ronald Reagan as the 5th president on the mountain. Using a chunk of the Berlin Wall for the sculpture since Reagan helped end the Cold War was a suggestion.
And after his sudden death in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt seemed a perfect choice to join his fifth cousin, Teddy, on the mountain.
New faces, however, are not coming. The National Park Service says what rock is left is not suitable for carving and there’s simply no more room.
