City of Presidents RoadyGoat
In downtown Rapid City, the presidents are out walking the sidewalks. Life-size bronze statues of American presidents stand on nearly every street corner, the 'City of Presidents' project that began in 2000 after a local man, Don Perdue, noticed how people couldn't stop touching a temporary Lincoln statue outside the Hotel Alex Johnson. The first four, Washington, Adams, Reagan, and the elder Bush, went up that year, and the collection has grown to honor every president since, sculpted by six different artists across about five downtown blocks. The setting fits: Rapid City is the gateway to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore, where four presidents are carved into granite about thirty miles southwest. So you can shake a bronze president's hand downtown, then go see four more sixty feet tall in the mountains. Few cities lean this hard into the office.
