Mount Rushmore National Park to Be ‘Temporarily Closed’ After Tourists Keep Trying to Climb Teddy Roosevelt’s Face to ‘Manifest Destiny’
RAPID CITY, SD – In a move that has shocked absolutely no one who has ever interacted with the general public, the National Park Service (NPS) announced today the indefinite “temporary closure” of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial after a staggering spike in incidents involving tourists attempting to scale the 60-foot granite visage of Theodore Roosevelt, allegedly to “hug him” or “claim the peak for the gig economy.”
According to a press release that sounded like it was written through gritted teeth, park rangers have logged over 140 “unauthorized ascents” in the past three months alone. The trend, which park officials are calling “Giga-Climbing,” appears to have been sparked by a now-deleted TikTok video from influencer “CryptoChad420,” who successfully reached TR’s nostril while live-streaming under the caption, “YOLO, bro. This is what the founding fathers wanted.”
“We are dealing with a public that has collectively decided that a national monument is a climbing gym for dipshits,” said NPS spokesperson Karen Mulligan, sighing so hard the audio feedback on the conference call caused a small tremor. “Just yesterday, a man from Ohio tried to rope-gun off of George Washington’s sideburn because he saw a ‘sponsored post’ for it. He was wearing Crocs. We are not equipped for this level of stupid.”
The catalyst for the closure appears to be the “Great Roosevelt Rodeo” of last Tuesday. A group of seven tourists from a “WeWork alumni retreat” decided that the best way to “build synergy” was to attempt a human pyramid on Thomas Jefferson’s head. When a ranger yelled at them to get down, one of them reportedly shouted back, “Don’t you know who I am? I’m a disruptor!”
“They were trying to ‘hack’ the monument,” said park ranger Dave Hargrove, who has worked at the site for 22 years. “One of them literally had a laptop taped to his chest. He kept yelling about ‘decentralized ownership of facial features.’ I asked him to leave, and he said, ‘You can’t fire me, I quit.’ I’m 58 years old. My back hurts. I just want to look at some big stone heads without having to file a report for ‘possible cranial vandalism.’”
The NPS has attempted to curb the behavior. They installed higher fences. The tourists brought ladders. They added “Please Do Not Touch the Presidents” signs in three languages. The tourists interpreted this as a “speedrun challenge.” One viral video, viewed 4 million times before being taken down, showed a woman in Lululemon yoga pants doing a handstand on Abraham Lincoln’s top hat while her boyfriend filmed it on a GoPro strapped to a selfie stick.
“It’s a feedback loop of pure, unadulterated cringe,” said Dr. Emily Carter, a sociologist at the University of South Dakota who specializes in internet culture. “We are living in the era of the ‘Main Character Syndrome.’ People see a massive, iconic structure and their first instinct isn’t awe or respect. It’s ‘How can I become the main character of this thing for 15 seconds of attention?’ And the algorithm rewards it. Mount Rushmore is just the final boss of this trend.”
The final straw, however, was the “Teddy Bear Incident.” A 24-year-old man from Austin, Texas, who goes by the Instagram handle “GriftMasterFlex,” managed to rappel from the top of the mountain down to Roosevelt’s left ear. He then proceeded to duct-tape a Bluetooth speaker to the stone and blast “American Girl” by Tom Petty for 45 minutes before being tased by a SWAT team.
“He was crying and saying he was ‘trying to heal the timeline,’” Mulligan said. “We have his GoPro footage. He had a GoFundMe for ‘legal fees’ set up *before* he even started climbing. The level of pre-meditated cringe is staggering.”
The closure, which is effective immediately and has no set end date, has sparked a predictable meltdown on social media. The subreddit r/MountRushmore (which used to be about the monument but is now 90% posts about the closure) is a dumpster fire of hot takes.
“This is government overreach! The founders would have wanted me to try to surf down Teddy’s nose! It’s my birthright as an American! #ClimbRushmore #LetThePeopleClimb” wrote user u/PatriotGamer_420, who has never climbed anything more strenuous than a flight of stairs in a mall.
“NTA. The tourists are idiots, but the NPS is being dramatic. It’s just rocks. Let them fall off. Natural selection, bro,” countered u/DrillSgtDebbie, a self-proclaimed “libertarian mom” from Florida.
“YTA. The real assholes are the people who made this a tourist trap in the first place. The Black Hills are sacred land. This whole mess is just the universe’s karma for carving a bunch of racist faces into a mountain. Maybe the cringe climbers are actually doing God’s work by distracting everyone from the genocide? Deep thought,” wrote u/DeepThoughtsFromTheShower, earning exactly 3 upvotes and 47 angry replies.
The NPS has stated that they will use the closure to “reassess public safety protocols” and install “non-scalable, laser-triggered sprinkler systems.” They have also announced a new “Anti-Cringe Task Force” that will monitor social media for any attempts to plan future climbs. First-time offenders will be banned from all national parks for a year. Repeat offenders will be forced to write a 5,000-word essay on the history of the Gilded Age, citing at least 20 sources.
“We are asking the public to please, for the love of God, just look at
Final Thoughts
After decades of covering monuments and the narratives they carve into stone, it's clear that Mount Rushmore is less a portrait of four men and more a mirror for America’s own selective memory—a breathtaking feat of engineering that simultaneously immortalizes a sanitized, triumphant origin story while erasing the indigenous peoples for whom that very landscape was already sacred. The real lesson isn't in the granite faces, but in the shadow they cast: a reminder that national pride is often a deliberate construction, and that the most honest monuments are those that force us to reckon with what they leave out. Ultimately, Rushmore stands as a powerful, uncomfortable testament to the fact that history is always told by the victors, and that the most enduring sculptures are those that leave us questioning the chisel.