The Rushmore post office opened in 1878, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Miller (1878), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
First census: 99 in 18802020 census: 365148 years
Founding year: the first Rushmore post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Rushmore’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The city was named for S.M. Rushmore, an early pioneer. The town owes its existence to the construction of the Worthington and Sioux Falls Railway, and the desire of a New York capitalist to establish a land colonization scheme in southwestern Minnesota. When the Worthington and Sioux Falls Railway was initially surveyed, it was decided to construct a station house in section 19 of Dewald Township. The station house was Named Miller Station, in honor of ex-governor Stephen Miller, and for two years it had no inhabitants. In 1878, George I. Seney, a New York capitalist, secured control of large plots of railroad land in Dewald and Olney Townships. He immediately began the process of colonizing the lands, bringing out settlers from New York City and other eastern points. On May 27, 1878, a Mr. S. M. Rushmore arrived in Worthington along with his family, and immediately took a train for M…
Passages that mention Rushmore, cut from the printed page as they were published.
An illustrated history of Nobles County, Minnesota1908 · page 327Read the page →
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county. He immediately took as a soldier's homestead a quarter section of land on section 26, Olney township, two miles west of the present village of Rushmore, and there he lU-ide his homo until 1891. Besides farm ing, he also engaged in carpenter W(n'k, and many of the first buildings in Rushmore were erected by him. In 1891 he retired from ac-
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An illustrated history of Nobles County, Minnesota1908 · page 253Read the page →
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The building of the little village of Rushmore was continued during 1879. In llarch E. L. Wemple, who had been appointed agent for the sale of town lots, completed a hotel building and opened a hotel which he conducted for more than a quarter century. A church building was erected, a school house was
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Rushmore, 1878 to 1967
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
