In the spring of 2018, I realized I was going to be making my last ever payment of my student loan on July 5, 2018. That is just one day after Independence Day. It got me thinking. I should do something special for Independence Day. After all, with no mortgage, no car payment, and no student loan debt left, I would finally be DEBT FREE and INDEPENDENT! Not bad for someone who just turned 40 years old that year.
I chose as my Independence Day celebration destination a place I had never been: Mount Rushmore. It was also in one of the few states I had never been to: South Dakota. How about a road trip? My friend Marshall decided he would join me. We would first fly to Denver and visit with my high school best friend, Sean. It was an election year, so of course, there were protests in downtown Denver that Saturday morning. The protestors were out there in force on behalf of illegal immigrants, with the chants of “ABOLISH I.C.E” (The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency). Later that day Marshall arrived into Denver and the next day we were driving north, through Nebraska and into South Dakota.
We made visits to the Massacre of Wounded Knee memorial site, Badlands National Park, the Minuteman Missile Site, and the famous Wall Drug Store. And then we were headed to Mount Rushmore for their Independence Day celebration on July 3rd.
You might ask: why July 3rd? Isn’t Independence Day on July 4th? Glad you asked.
Only a few weeks before our trip, Marshall called me up: “Cisco, there are no fireworks at Mount Rushmore on July 4th.” I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about. After all, I’ve seen plenty of photos of fireworks at Mount Rushmore. This is part of why we were going. It’s one of the most iconic patriotic symbols of our nation and an architectural and artistic masterpiece. Of course, there would be fireworks there on July 4th!
I was wrong. Fireworks were discontinued at Mount Rushmore in 2009 due to environmental concerns. 2009 … 2009. Ah yes, that was the first year of the Obama administration. I’ll let you be the judge why fireworks at Mount Rushmore were canceled, but I found that fact interesting. Especially now, from the perspective of 2020 and the entire cancel culture.
I actually could conceive that perhaps it was too dry there one year, or for a few years. But for 10 years? That doesn’t seem right either. Coincidentally I have a friend who works as a Presidential appointee at the Department of Interior in Washington, DC. Perhaps he could provide me with an answer – if he even knows about it.
So, I called my friend Ryan and he told me he would look into it. He did. Ryan spoke with top officials about the idea of restoring the fireworks at Mount Rushmore. He called me back within the week to confirm that the fireworks were indeed canceled during the previous administration, citing environmental concerns.
“Then why do all the other little small towns within 30 minutes or so of Mount Rushmore hold fireworks on July 4th?” I asked. He looked into that too. His short answer was that those small cities and towns all have their own fire departments, staff up with additional firefighters for the fireworks demonstration, and pay them accordingly, to work on a federal holiday. The federal government decided against that extra funding for additional firefighters on a federal holiday.
While I am about as limited government a guy as there is, I thought: how unpatriotic. If there’s any day to pay some extra money to some extra firefighters, wouldn’t this be the day? Wouldn’t this be the place? I would bet that each of the thousands of visitors that day would be happy to each pay an extra $20 or so to see fireworks at Mount Rushmore. Ryan sympathized with that and kept the idea moving.
Well, Marshall and I attended the Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2018. We met re-enactors of all four Presidents and got photos with each of them. We saw the them light up the Presidential faces on the rocks just after dusk. We heard from the U.S. Air Force Heartland of America Band, playing all sorts of patriotic songs. We also witnessed junior park rangers sworn in. We also visited the Crazy Horse memorial (still under construction 30 minutes away). It was all around a great day.
The next day, July 4th, we visited Calvin Coolidge’s 1927 “Summer White House” at the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park, visited the “America’s Founding Fathers” site where we witnessed a reading of the Declaration of Independence by life-like mannequins of the Founding Fathers – and shot American Revolutionary-era musket rifles; we traversed up to Deadwood to see what it was like in the Wild West of 1876; and then we had a great time walking around the town of Lead, South Dakota, and joined locals for a wonderful Fourth of July fireworks celebration over the “Open Cut” of an old mine. The people of this part of the country are as salt of the earth as they come, and I was thankful to have gotten to meet many of them on this most American of holidays.
About 10 months later, I got a call from Ryan. He wanted me to check out the Department of Interior’s website. I went there and read the announcement: they would be bringing back fireworks to Mount Rushmore in 2020. Whoa! He then told me that the initial inquiry I had put into him a year before had led to this moment. Wow!
When I originally called Ryan in 2018, I also emphasized to him: President Trump needs to be the one that brings fireworks back to Mount Rushmore. He can even go there and make a speech and tell the country that he Made Mount Rushmore Great Again! It would be fantastic. From the lens of 2019, there wasn’t any confirmation Trump could be there in 2020, but when I heard 2020 was the year it would be happening again, I emphasized this point to Ryan and others. I think it would be a great statement in his re-election year of 2020.
How could I ever imagine what 2020 would be like with a pandemic, protests, riots, and looting across American cities? In April 2020, while we were in the middle of an economic lockdown, I could start to envision the light at the end of the tunnel. I called Ryan again. I told him: you know what would be great for America? If our President went to Mount Rushmore for the Independence Day celebration. He could talk about the 100,000+ Americans who died of COVID19. He could talk about the devastation this pandemic caused to the economy with the many millions that had been put out of work. He could talk about how China was responsible for this. He could re-emphasize his 2016 message of “America First” and he could come to this most iconic of American monuments and tell Americans it was finally time to get back to work and to start traveling again. While international travel may be out for a little while, we should come out to America’s national parks and visit many of America’s national monuments, such as the Mount Rushmore he would be standing in front of as he spoke those words. President Trump could emphasize to America that we should all look inside our nation’s borders and rediscover the greatness of this country. The vision was becoming clearer (to me, anyways). This should happen.
And then just over a month later, a man named George Floyd was killed. The image of a white police officer suffocating a black man lit off a fuse of social unrest after nearly three months of an economic lockdown. People turned to protests. Then came riots. Then came looting. And now it has led to some calling for a destruction of American history, the removal of statues, of monuments, of not only slave holders and Confederates, but of founding fathers.
I then was reading an article in National Review by Kyle Smith and he said he believed this “woke” ideology would not end until it brought us to the destruction of Mount Rushmore. I gasped and almost choked on my lunch. “NO WAY!”
After my amazing visit to Mount Rushmore in July 2018, I came away so inspired by this place, this monument. When you learn how it was built, how many Americans contributed to it, in the middle of the Great Depression, and how dynamite blasts and sculptors helped carve it completely in just 13 years during that difficult time for our nation, you are inspired that Americans can quite possibly do anything. When you learn why the architect Gutzon Borglum, a son of Danish immigrants, chose these four men (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln) to represent the great periods of American history, you grow deeper admiration for American Exceptionalism. After my visit in 2018, I came away with confidence that this monument would be here for the ages for all to come and learn what is possible on so many levels.
To now even bear the thought that someone would even think of destroying this iconic monument – that Americans would even think of doing that – it blows my mind. No person ever born (save, Jesus Christ) was perfect. Every single person on this planet is fallible, including those great men that put this country on a solid foundation to advance liberty for all, not just here, but around the world. It is why millions of immigrants still come here every year. America is not perfect. But America represents a promise. And immigrants, like my dad and my grandparents who were all born in Cuba, want a taste of that.
I didn’t waste a minute. I called Ryan back. I told him what I had just read. The thought disturbed me. But at this moment, there were rioters and looters destroying all sorts of statues and monuments. He assured me the federal government and the Governor of South Dakota are solidly protecting Mount Rushmore. I then re-emphasized to him that President Trump has yet another reason to go to Mount Rushmore for the Independence Day fireworks he is responsible for bringing back after a decade of absence. What greater time for him to go there?
In addition to Making Mount Rushmore Great Again and giving Americans something to hope for after the COVID19 economic lockdown, he now also has the opportunity to remind Americans why the heroes on Mount Rushmore were chosen and why Americans should not be whitewashing our history, but instead should be revering it, studying it, and learning from it. The problem today is that very few in our country know much about our history. They don’t know the historical context of each and every generation of Americans. How dare this generation consider itself greater than the ones before? We are standing on their shoulders. Not the other way around. And we are not perfect either.
A few days after my call to Ryan, I found out that President Trump was confirmed to be there for this year’s Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore. It had been in the works for weeks and something that was certainly an idea for many more months. Now it was happening! A few days later Ryan asked me if I would go if tickets were made available to me. Absolutely!
With less than a week before the celebration, which still takes place there on July 3rd, Ryan told me that a friend in the White House wanted to extend a ticket for me and him to go. I could not believe this. I immediately changed some of my plans and booked the opportunity to go over the holiday weekend.
I am posting this article on the morning of July 3rd. I flew in here to Denver last night and Ryan and I are making our way up to Mount Rushmore. When the President speaks and those fireworks light up over the faces of our nation’s heroes, tears may just be coming down my face.
I know it will all be meaningful and emotional because one American decided to make a call to a friend. And that friend didn’t take the call lightly. He was put in his role because of his commitment to this country. The Governor of South Dakota, the Secretary of the Department of Interior, and the President of the United States, and their staff, all agreed that bringing fireworks back to one of America’s most iconic sites – a site made together by both nature and man and filled with the dreams of those who believed in liberty and equality for all – was so important. They believed this before COVID, before the economic lockdowns, before the protests, before the riots, before the looting, before the tearing down of statues. And because we all believed in the importance of bringing fireworks back here to Mount Rushmore to celebrate this great nation’s birth, this event will be of historic significance for our country at a time of monumental importance for all who desire to breathe the air of liberty and protect it for all those who one day may have the opportunity to do the same.
God bless America! Thank you to President Trump and all who made this day possible to Make Mount Rushmore Great Again. May our country continue to stand on the shoulders of those giants of American history who are etched on rock to be remembered for the ages and the gigantic 5,000-year leap they helped humanity take.