South Dakota governor asks Trump to build promised statue garden and put it near Mount Rushmore

South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden sent President Donald Trump an invitation Tuesday to fulfill a promise from five years ago: the creation of a “National Garden of American Heroes.”

And Rhoden wants Trump to put the statue garden in South Dakota’s Black Hills.

“In fact, we have a plot of land available in sight of Mount Rushmore that would be ideal for this fantastic effort,” Rhoden wrote in a letter to Trump.

That plot of land, according to Rhoden, is privately owned by the Lien family, which is willing to donate it. Members of the family own and operate Pete Lien & Sons Inc., a mining, construction aggregate, and concrete company based in Rapid City.

Additional materials made public by the Governor’s Office include a letter from the Lien family, which says the land “straddles the iconic Doane Robinson tunnel,” although an attached map appears to depict the land as just north of the tunnel. Motorists frequently stop at the tunnel for a framed view of the mountain carving.

The Lien family has worked with Storyland Development, of California, to produce conceptual drawings of the statue garden, which are included in the materials from the Governor’s Office.

The materials also include a 2020 letter from then-Gov. Kristi Noem, who proposed at the time that the statue garden should be built “at Mount Rushmore National Memorial as an expansion of the Memorial site.” She went on to mention the bronze statues of presidents in downtown Rapid City and the statues of governors in Pierre and wrote, “I am confident these organizations would be amenable to a short-term loan of statues to the National Garden.”

Mount Rushmore is managed by the National Park Service, and much of the surrounding land is managed by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Black Hills National Forest. Parcels of private land, many of them claimed during the gold rush era of the late 1800s, are scattered throughout the forest.

Trump made his statue garden promise at a Mount Rushmore fireworks celebration on July 3, 2020. Rhoden has invited Trump back to Mount Rushmore next year for another fireworks display and a celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday.

The 2020 announcement came during a speech in which Trump said agents of “cancel culture” were “trying to tear down statues of our Founders” and “deface our most sacred memorials.”

George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer had occurred two months earlier, adding fuel to a reexamination of historic monuments and statues associated with racial injustice. That summer, numerous statues were vandalized, removed or both, including many that honored Confederate Civil War figures.

Trump said in the 2020 speech that those efforts were “erasing our heritage.” He called for Americans to “speak up loudly and strongly and powerfully and defend the integrity of our country.”

“So today,” Trump said at the time, “under the authority vested in me as president of the United States, I am announcing the creation of a new monument to the giants of our past. I am signing an executive order to establish the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live.”

Trump issued the executive order that day and another one on Jan. 18, 2021 — two days before he left office at the end of his first term — calling for the creation of the garden without identifying a site.

The second order said the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities “should target spending one-twelfth of the discretionary funds available to their agencies” on commissioning the statues. Each of those agencies received $207 million last year. One-12th of that amount would be $17.2 million apiece.

The second order also included a list of about 250 people to be honored with statues, ranging from historical figures such as George Washington and Harriet Tubman to modern names including Kobe Bryant and Alex Trebek.