I’d also consider Frederick Douglass. Ella Fitzgerald and Paul Simon come to mind as well, but maybe that’s just me. 
Might as well throw in Jennifer Love Hewitt because she’ll count double.
He’s a citizen of the galaxy.
Tennessee:
David Crockett (he and Sam Houston were ours before going to Texas)
Andrew Jackson
Elvis
Dolly Parton (does she count as a single or double?)
Another view from California:
The group of oligarch monopolists who ruled California by and for their own greed, and would have had no trouble buying their own Mt. Rushmore for themselves:
Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Jr. and C. P. Huntington.
she would have to be on two peaks.
Beat me to it and it’s hard to argue with those picks. The only one I would consider replacing would be Kesey with Matt Groening, Beverley Cleary, or Ursula LeGuin.
Hey, I climb up Mount Oread every day – to get from where I park my car to my office front door. I kid you not.
I concur with the Kansas Rushmore previously mentioned, except I’d replace the astronomer with John Brown (the abolitionist), and the Treasury Secretary with James Naismith (the inventor of basketball). Neither spent their whole life here, but important chunks of it.
Man, I feel so unhip. California:
Juan Cabrillo
John C. Frémont
John Muir
Mark Twain
Of course none of them were born here! It’s California!
OK:
Wiley Post
Will Rogers
Barry Switzer
Garth Brooks
No Daniel Boone or Man O War?
His political career was in New York, and he was elected to the presidency while governor of the state. But you can have one of him.
The CA monument should just be a giant sign that reads, “Welcome to California…Now, Please Leave!”
WYOMING
Jim Bridger, Chief Washakie, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Jackson Pollock.
Alternatives: Owen Wister, Curt Gowdy, Harrison Ford, Chris LaDeux
I like your choices, but then I wonder how we can leave off Juliette Gordon Lowe, Ray Charles, or Dr. Crawford W. Long. Or Johnny Mercer, Conrad Aiken, Bobby Jones, Jessye Norman?
I think my final four would have to be MLK, Jimmy Carter, Margaret Mitchell, and Juliette Gordon Lowe.
Illinois:
Potter Palmer, Studs Terkel, Miles Davis and Clarence Darrow.
I assume they would need to be deceased or I would have found a way to include Steve Albini.
Or you could take the low road and go with Paula Dean, Hulk Hogan, Burt Reynolds, and Ryan Seacrest.
My wife mentioned Bobby Jones, which I liked. We really don’t have much of a claim to Ray Charles, though. He moved to Florida as an infant. We love him most for the song.
Do you think Juliette Gordon Lowe is known well enough by the average Georgian?
Also, I’m not sure where the above poster got the idea that Burt Reynolds is Georgian, or that Hulk Hogan spent any amount of time here. Someone else can have those guys.
Gotta have Adolph Rupp.
No way, although most of them were here as long as the Nationals have been.
My list is Marvin Gaye, Chuck Brown, Marion Barry*, Boss Shepherd, and whoever invented the half-smoke.
- I may not like him very much, but for better of for worse, he has been a major player in the District for a long time and has left his mark on the District.