Mount Rushmore

THEY'RE BACK. The grande dames of U.S. women's soccer are back together, defending their World Cup title on American playing fields. Who can forget the exhilarating victory for women's sports of all kinds when they took the last cup in 1999 with a nail-biter over China before more than 90,000 screaming fans in the Rose Bowl and a worldwide TV audience of 40 million? But this time around seems very different for the four 30-somethings dubbed "the Mount Rushmore of U.S. women's soccer": Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Julie Foudy and Joy Fawcett.

Your article about Michael Phelps ' prospects for being on Baltimore's Mount Rushmore of athletes made me think who else could be compared to its towering figures ("Make room on our Rushmore," Aug. 5). James Rouse would be George Washington, Thomas Jefferson could be Walter Sondheim, Franklin Roosevelt would be William Donald Schaefer and Teddy Roosevelt would be the recently retired Jay Brodie. These great men had the courage, vision and intelligence to take a rat- infested harbor of the 1950s and turn it into a vibrant economic engine of success that we can all be proud of. The next generation of Baltimore leaders may well hail from the world of technology.

THE DEBATE over whether the new FDR Memorial in Washington should include Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair is an example of Madisonian interest group politics run amok, the trivial driving out the essential.FDR, a symbol of 20th century America at its best, belongs on Mount Rushmore, not in a wheelchair. To save the day we must, for the second time this century, turn to the Gutzon Borglum model of civic action.Mount Rushmore, unlike the static monuments typically raised in the nation's capital, is a work in progress, a running chronicle of the American experience.

Former Gov. Bob Ehrlich had lots of options when he hired Julius Henson , the bad-boy political operative behind the robocall that urged Baltimore voters to "relax" and stay home from the polls on Election Day. Henson's Universal Elections offers a range of campaign packages, all named for U.S. presidents. The faces of our nation's greatest leaders are arrayed on Universal's website like an expanded Mount Rushmore, each one paired with a list of goods and services named in his honor.

When sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved four 60-foot-high faces into the hills of Mount Rushmore, he anticipated they would stand as a stone witness "to the great things we accomplished as a nation."Chiseled into granite so impermeable that it erodes less than one inch every 1,500 years, the famed memorial seems certain to part of the immutable landscape that the Lakota Sioux called Paha Saa, the "Hills of Black," forever. But the plateau 500 feet below the stony gazes of the four chiseled presidents has been abuzz with building plans and blueprints.

Start with Rushmore, which gets the better morning light. It's an easy 24-mile drive from Rapid City, S.D., (where the airport is) and only three miles from the ticky-tacky tourist town of Keystone just down the hill. If you show up early enough, you'll get a shaded parking place. From the Grand View Terrace, you can follow the half-mile loop trail that takes you to the base of the mountain and the sculptor's studio. As you move, the clouds drift and the sun advances, the faces change.

For 50 years the giant faces of Washington, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Jefferson have stared out over South Dakota's Black Hills, watching for a committee of VIPs which would formally dedicate Mount Rushmore to the American people.The committee never came. One might have, soon after sculptor Gutzon Borglum's masterwork was completed in 1941 -- but Pearl Harbor was bombed less than two months later, and any dedication plans were bombed with it.What with one thing or another, a formal dedication of the Mount Rushmore Memorial has been on hold ever since.

BLACK HILLS, S.D. -- Borglum or Ziolkowski? Within a day of arrival in the Black Hills of South Dakota, you'll run into this question, probably somewhere along U.S. 16 as you roll between two of the largest sculpted mountains on Earth. Gutzon Borglum's Mount Rushmore, of course, is your old friend from elementary school, and you think you know it well. Begun in 1927. Completed in 1941. Scrambled upon by Cary Grant in 1959's North by Northwest and, more recently, Nicolas Cage in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

West Hartford, Connecticut -- It's one of the most familiar and majestic icons of American culture. Carved into a granite cliff in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the great stone heads of the Mount Rushmore memorial loom over our national shoulder like prodigious patriarchs.Lofty, serene and immutable, the 60-feet tall faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt constitute one of the largest pieces of statuary in the world. Each bust alone is bigger than the entire Great Sphinx of Egypt.

Before Lara Croft raided electronic tombs, before the Green Lantern protected radio airwaves, long before Spider-Man and Batman and Superman fought public menaces in comic books, Deadwood Dick leapt from the pages of dime novels to thrill a generation in the 1880s with his rough exploits. He was as rugged as they come, and helped put the South Dakota landmark town of Deadwood on the map of American legends. A visit to Deadwood is part of the Midwesterner's classic trip "Out West," taking in such sites as the Black Hills, the Badlands and Mount Rushmore.

During one of the satirical cocktail conversations in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948), two women debate the virtues of James Mason ("so attractively sinister!") and Cary Grant. So it was perhaps a fulfillment of a directorial dream when, 50 years ago, Hitchcock pitted these two stars against each other in his most glorious adventure fantasy, "North by Northwest." "North by Northwest" reminds you of how magical and emotionally satisfying movie escapism can be, especially in the current era of "Transformers."

My husband and I live in Ellicott City and we took a Wild West trip in May through eight Midwestern states. Of course, seeing the incredible sight of Mount Rushmore was one of the highlights. To walk beneath it and read the history was very fascinating. President Lincoln's nose is 17 feet long - that's the size of the Statue of Liberty's entire head. We also found other interesting places to visit along our trek. On the campus of Wichita State University we discovered the original Pizza Hut, which was founded by two students who were attending the university.

BLACK HILLS, S.D. -- Borglum or Ziolkowski? Within a day of arrival in the Black Hills of South Dakota, you'll run into this question, probably somewhere along U.S. 16 as you roll between two of the largest sculpted mountains on Earth. Gutzon Borglum's Mount Rushmore, of course, is your old friend from elementary school, and you think you know it well. Begun in 1927. Completed in 1941. Scrambled upon by Cary Grant in 1959's North by Northwest and, more recently, Nicolas Cage in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

Start with Rushmore, which gets the better morning light. It's an easy 24-mile drive from Rapid City, S.D., (where the airport is) and only three miles from the ticky-tacky tourist town of Keystone just down the hill. If you show up early enough, you'll get a shaded parking place. From the Grand View Terrace, you can follow the half-mile loop trail that takes you to the base of the mountain and the sculptor's studio. As you move, the clouds drift and the sun advances, the faces change.

Before Lara Croft raided electronic tombs, before the Green Lantern protected radio airwaves, long before Spider-Man and Batman and Superman fought public menaces in comic books, Deadwood Dick leapt from the pages of dime novels to thrill a generation in the 1880s with his rough exploits. He was as rugged as they come, and helped put the South Dakota landmark town of Deadwood on the map of American legends. A visit to Deadwood is part of the Midwesterner's classic trip "Out West," taking in such sites as the Black Hills, the Badlands and Mount Rushmore.

CHICAGO -- People use all kinds of rationale to decide where to travel. What's a "must see" to some is "b-o-o-o-ring" to others.In search of offbeat America, many travelers skip the obvious because they consider them cliches.Well, bless William Zinsser's heart. In his new book, "American Places" (HarperCollins, $20), Mr. Zinsser searches out 15 places that he deemed "this country's most visited and cherished sites." He chose them because, much to his own chagrin, he had never visited them.

CUSTER, S.D. -- "Let me know when you see a buffalo," Matt said, not believing we'd ever spot one outside a TV set. He was engrossed in his Game Boy in the back seat -- too busy, he said, to watch boring Black Hills scenery through the minivan windows. That changed in a hurry."Look!" Reggie said excitedly, pointing to the side of the road where a huge, furry brown bison -- that's the correct name for the 2,000-pound animal -- was nonchalantly grazing. A few miles farther, we slowed to let another lumber across in front of the car. Custer State Park, where we were driving, has one of the largest bison herds in the world: 1,400 in the 73,000-acre park.