Rancher Pays to Keep Lights Shining on Mt. Rushmore

KEYSTONE, S.D. — A South Dakota rancher has ensured that the lights will not go out on Mt. Rushmore, paying part of the electricity bill for the U.S. monument himself.

Mt. Rushmore, which features the giant heads of four past U.S. presidents carved in its stone face, has been closed to visitors because of the budget impasse between Congress and the White House.

The memorial, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, has the heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, each about 60 feet high, carved in granite. The monument, finished in 1941, is visited by about 1 million people each year.

Art Oakes said he had paid the bill for Mt. Rushmore’s floodlights for another week because he did not want one of the United States’ premier monuments “taken hostage by the government shutdown.”

“Mt. Rushmore is next to the flag as being a national symbol and it shines out over the prairie for everybody,” Oakes said Friday.

Last week, Oakes sent $140 to make sure the monument was lit up over the Christmas week. But the money ran out and he sent another check on Wednesday.

He said he did not anticipate the partial shutdown lasting as long as it has, and he welcomed others to pitch in.

“I’m not a rich man,” Oakes said. “I can’t afford much more of this.”