Doane Robinson

1856 - 1946

Doane Robinson was a laywer and the South Dakota State Historian and the secretary of the South Dakota State Historical Society for two terms.

Robinson is best known as the "Father of Mount Rushmore", since it was his idea originally to carve geological formations in the Black Hills called 'the Needles' into depictions of Western heroes and frontier life to attract tourists to South Dakota. He was also the man who invited sculptor Gutzon Borglum to take up the project. Although later when Mount Rushmore received Congressional attention Doane Robinson was overlooked as a member of any committee and eventually left the project in bitterness, Doane Robinson is today remembered as the man with the original idea for what became Rushmore.