Of all the 6-inch gold ornaments on the White House Christmas tree this year, Valerie Gibeau admitted which one is her favorite - the one she decorated.

Just like of all the National Parks Service parks and memorials, she says her favorite is where she works - Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

"Every park has a different feel and a different theme and they're all wonderful," she said. "They all tell the history of the United States."

America's national parks are the focus of this year's elaborate White House holiday decorations. The official White House Christmas tree is decorated with 347 ornaments hand-created by artists whose designs represent America's national parks, memorials, seashores, historic sites and monuments, including Gibeau's.

Gibeau got involved with the National Park Service as a volunteer at Mount Rushmore in the summer of 2006, after 18 years as a travel agent at Ellsworth Air Force Base.

In 2007, she was hired for a seasonal job with the Cultural Resources and Facilities Division, and spent part of the summer taking a sculpting class with the memorial's artist in residence.

Lucky she did. Without that, she doesn't think she would have been up to the job. But she was ready when Mount Rushmore got a letter from Laura Bush, asking them to participate in decorating an ornament.

First, she thought about the focus of this year's elaborate White House holiday decorations. The official White House Christmas tree is decorated with 347 ornaments hand-created by artists whose designs represent America's national parks, memorials, seashores, historic sites and monuments, including Gibeau's.

Gibeau got involved with the National Park Service as a volunteer at Mount Rushmore in the summer of 2006, after 18 years as a travel agent at Ellsworth Air Force Base.

In 2007, she was hired for a seasonal job with the Cultural Resources and Facilities Division, and spent part of the summer taking a sculpting class with the memorial's artist in residence.

Lucky she did. Without that, she doesn't think she would have been up to the job. But she was ready when Mount Rushmore got a letter from Laura Bush, asking them to participate in decorating an ornament.

First, she thought about painting the four presidents onto the ornament, but "That's just what anybody can do. I thought sculpting them in profile would be more like Mount Rushmore."

She sculpted them out of clay, and when they were dry affixed the profiles to the orb.

"I enjoyed just working with the rock and bringing out the forms that are in the rock and working with my hands," she said.

On the bottom, she painted a nighttime scene, a full moon shining on a Native village in the hills. Around it she painted a verse from Acts: "(He) hath made of one blood all nations of men … ."

Now, the ornament is hanging on a tree in the Blue Room at the White House.

When Gibeau traveled to Washington, D.C., last week for a Wednesday party in honor of all the artists, she had her picture taken with the 18-foot Fraser fir, holding ornaments representing all 391 National Park Service sites.

The faces in the Black Hills were there alongside deserts and mountains, the Statue of Liberty and Old Faithful.

"I just wanted to represent Mount Rushmore and the presidents that are engraved up there," she said. "They did a lot for our country and I wanted to represent them and our park for everybody."

Other area parks represented on the tree include:

- Badlands National Park - The ornament was created by Badlands Artist in Residence Charlie Lyon of Minneapolis, Minn. Lyon completed his residency in October, 2005. A panoramic Badlands landscape covers most of the ornament. On the bottom of the ball, three Badlands bull bison are represented.

- Minuteman Missile National Historic Site - Artist Joan Buckles of Gordon, Neb., designed the site's Christmas ornament. Buckles ornament is a gold ball decorated with crisscrossed flags from the United States and former Soviet Union with a Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile centered between them. This logo is symbolic of the site's mission to interpret the history of the Minuteman Missile weapons system and the Cold War.