If you’ve spent any time on the weirder corners of the internet, you’ve probably seen it. A grainy photo of four massive stone backsides, supposedly the "other side" of South Dakota’s most famous landmark. People share it with captions like "Finally, the view from behind!" It’s funny. It’s a great meme. But it’s also a total lie.
Mount Rushmore from the back doesn’t look like a row of giant granite rumps. Honestly, it doesn't look like much of anything at all.
When you stand on the opposite side of the Black Hills’ most famous crag, you aren't looking at the reverse side of a sculpture. You’re looking at a mountain. A rugged, jagged, pine-covered heap of South Dakota rock that looks remarkably similar to every other peak in the Harney Peak Granite Range. The faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln are only carved about 60 feet deep into a mountain that is hundreds of feet thick. There is no "back" to the carvings. There is only the rest of the mountain.
The Viral Hoax vs. The Reality of the Black Hills
We have to address the elephant in the room. Or rather, the four giant stone butts in the room.
There is a very famous digital illustration that circulates every few months on social media. It shows the backside of the four presidents as if they were full-bodied statues sitting on the edge of a cliff. It’s cleverly done. It looks realistic enough to fool someone who hasn't been to Keystone. But if you think about the physics for even a second, it falls apart. Mount Rushmore isn't a series of standalone statues. Gutzon Borglum, the lead sculptor, didn't carve them out of thin air. He blasted away the front of a massive granite batholith.
To see the actual area behind the faces, you’d have to hike into the backcountry of the Black Hills National Forest. If you managed to scramble up the ridges behind the monument—which, to be clear, is restricted and highly illegal without a permit—you would see a mess of broken rock and ponderosa pines. You'd see the "rubble pile" of the nearly 450,000 tons of granite that were blasted off the face during construction between 1927 and 1941.
It's messy. It's unrefined. It's just nature.
What’s Actually Hiding Behind the Faces?
While there aren't giant stone backsides, there is something hidden behind the faces that most tourists never get to see. This isn't a conspiracy theory; it’s a matter of architectural record.
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Borglum was a man of ego and grand visions. He didn't just want a mountain with faces; he wanted a "shrine to democracy." His original plan included a massive room carved directly into the granite behind the heads. This was the Hall of Records.
Located roughly behind Abraham Lincoln’s head, this canyon-like entry was intended to be a vault for the most important documents in American history. Borglum envisioned a grand staircase leading up to a 80-foot-tall chamber filled with bronze cabinets containing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He wanted future civilizations—thousands of years from now—to understand why he had butchered a perfectly good mountain.
He started the work in 1938.
He didn't finish.
The government, facing the looming threat of World War II and a tightening budget, told him to stop messing around with the "secret room" and focus on finishing the faces. Borglum died in 1941, and the Hall of Records remained a jagged, unfinished tunnel. For decades, it sat empty. Then, in 1998, the National Park Service finally fulfilled a piece of Borglum’s dream. They placed a teakwood box inside a titanium vault in the floor of the hall’s entrance. Inside are 16 porcelain enamel panels detailing the history of the United States.
You can't go in there. It's behind the faces, tucked away from the public eye, protected by the sheer verticality of the rock and federal law. When people search for mount rushmore from the back, this is the real secret they should be looking for.
Why the "Back View" is Physically Impossible
To understand why the back view is just more mountain, you have to understand the geology. The granite of Mount Rushmore is part of the Needles formation. It’s incredibly hard rock. It doesn’t erode easily, which is why Borglum chose it.
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But he didn't carve "through" the mountain.
The carvings are essentially a high-relief sculpture. Think of it like a coin. A coin has a face, but the back of the coin is just... the other side of the metal. If you carved a face into the side of a brick, the back of the brick wouldn't suddenly become a back of a head. It would stay a brick. Mount Rushmore is the brick.
The faces are positioned on the southeast-facing slope to maximize sunlight. This was a deliberate choice by Borglum to ensure the shadows would define the features of the presidents throughout the day. The "back" of the mountain faces northwest. If you were to fly a drone over the top (which, again, is super illegal), you would see the tops of the heads—smooth-ish granite plates—and then a steep drop-off into the forest.
The Perspective From the Blackberry Trail
If you really want to see the mountain from a different angle, you don't look for the "back." You look for the profile.
Most people stay on the Grand View Terrace. They walk the Presidential Trail. They see the faces head-on. But if you head out toward the Blackberry Trail or certain sections of the Horsethief Lake Trail, you get a glimpse of the geological massive-ness of the site.
From these vantage points, you realize how small the carvings actually are compared to the mountain. You see the sheer cliffs that drop off behind the presidents. You see the "unfinished" nature of the work. For instance, did you know Thomas Jefferson was originally supposed to be on Washington's right? They started carving him there, realized the rock was too soft (a "seam" of bad granite), and literally blasted his face off to start over on the other side.
If you could look "behind" the current Jefferson, you’d see the scars of that failed first attempt.
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The Controversial History You Can't See from the Front
There is another way to look at mount rushmore from the back, and that’s through the lens of history. To the Lakota Sioux, this mountain wasn't a canvas. It was Six Grandfathers.
The mountain sits in the Black Hills, land that was promised to the Sioux in the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. That treaty didn't last. Gold was found. The U.S. government took the land back. To many indigenous people, carving the faces of four white colonizers into a sacred mountain isn't "art." It's the ultimate "back view" of American history—the part that gets hidden behind the patriotic glitz.
When you stand at the base of the monument, you’re looking at what the U.S. wants to project. When you think about the mountain from the perspective of its original inhabitants, you’re looking at the part of the story that isn't carved in stone.
Logistics: Can You Actually Get Behind It?
Let's talk practicalities for a second. If you’re a hiker and you’re wondering if there’s a secret trail to the back, the answer is: kind of, but not really.
The National Memorial occupies 1,278 acres. Most of that is rugged forest. There are strictly enforced security perimeters. Since the 1990s, security has been incredibly tight. You cannot hike to the top of the heads. You cannot hike behind the heads.
However, you can get a "backside" experience by visiting Crazy Horse Memorial, just about 17 miles down the road. Unlike Rushmore, Crazy Horse is a work in progress being carved in the round. You can actually take trips to the top of the mountain there (for a donation). It gives you a sense of the scale of mountain carving that Rushmore lacks because Rushmore is finished and walled off.
Common Misconceptions About the Site
- "There is a secret city behind the faces." No. Just the unfinished Hall of Records, which is basically a 70-foot long room with a 20-foot ceiling. No gold, no aliens, no National Treasure-style complexes.
- "The back of the heads are detailed." They aren't. They are flat or slightly rounded granite. No hair textures, no ears, no nothing.
- "You can see it from the highway." You can see the profile of Washington from certain spots on SD-244, but you can never see the "back" of the monument from any public road.
Practical Steps for Your Visit
If you’re planning a trip to see the monument and you want more than just the standard selfie, here is how you actually "see" the mountain:
- Visit at Night: The lighting ceremony is great, but seeing the silhouettes against the stars gives you a better sense of the mountain's physical depth.
- Hike the Blackberry Trail: It’s a moderate hike that connects to the Centennial Trail. It puts you in the wilderness behind the monument's developed area. You won't see the faces, but you’ll see the environment Borglum was working in.
- Check out Iron Mountain Road: This road has three tunnels specifically designed to frame Mount Rushmore. It doesn't show you the back, but it shows you the monument from a distance where it looks like it's part of the natural ridge line.
- Look for the "Old Man of the Forest": On the drive-up, look at the rock formations surrounding the monument. Some of the natural granite pillars look more like faces than the carvings themselves.
Basically, if you see a photo of four stone butts, laugh and keep scrolling. It’s a classic piece of internet folklore. The real "back" of Mount Rushmore is just a silent, rugged stretch of South Dakota wilderness that keeps the secrets of Borglum's unfinished hall and the history of the Black Hills tucked away where the tourists can't reach them.
To get the most out of your trip, focus on the Presidential Trail. It gets you as close as legally possible to the base of the mountain. You’ll look up and see the sheer scale of the granite blocks, the drill marks, and the massive piles of scree at the bottom. That's the real story. Not a meme, but a massive, slightly messy, and very permanent piece of engineering that changed a mountain forever.