Crazy Horse Mountain Carving

8 miles from the National Monument of Mount Rushmore an even larger mountain carving is taking place.  The Crazy Horse Memorial is also in the South Dakota Black Hills.   When completed it will be the largest mountain sculpture in the world.  Crazy Horse was a Lakota Indian and fierce warrior born in the 1840s.  He resisted US Government attempts to encroach on his lands and eventually died after being stabbed by a US Army bayonet.   "They broke every single treaty they ever made with us except one.  They promised to take our lands and they  did".   

The base of the sculpture has the inscription "These are my lands where my ancestors lie buried"

 Korczak Ziolkowski was a Polish sculptor who worked under Master Sculptor Gutzon Borglum on the Mount Rushmore mountain carving.  Ziolkowski was contacted by Chief Henry Standing Bear asking if he would be interested in creating a mountain carving for the Native Americans to show that Indian Nations also have heroes.  Ziolkowski  began the sculpture in 1948.   The dynamiting and bulldozing continues today.  When we visited the dozers were actively pushing chunks of granite away from the base.

 Mount Rushmore can fit into the forehead of Crazy Horse

 The unfinished Crazy Horse Sculpture is unfinished after almost 70 years.  Completion is expected to take 50 more years

We rode an old school bus run by the tribe on a dirt road  to the base of the Memorial

The Crazy Horse Visitors Center is an extensive Native American Museum consisting of a series of buildings that are architecturally unique and very well done.  I liked the Crazy Horse Memorial much better than Mount Rushmore. 

I like this photo I took of the Crazy Horse marble model juxtaposed against the mountain carving

Indian Sculpture outside the Crazy Horse Visitors Center

The Crazy Horse Terrace at the Visitors Center

Nicely Landscaped Crazy Horse Terrace

Crazy Horse Visitor Center and Native American Mueum

Crazy Horse Visitors Center

The Crazy Horse Visitors Center is actually an entrance hall into a very well one Native American Museum spread over several buildings.  I liked this facility very much.  It actually was quite a surprise find.  The extensive collection of artifacts was so well displayed and the materials used to display everything was well selected to complement the displays.  The museum is roomy with lots of space to reflect and study the objects on display.

Spacious Native American Museum Exhibits 

Spacious Exhibits are a characteristic of the facility

A treasure in the museum is 16 of the legendary beads received for the original sale of Manhattan by the Canarsee Indians to Dutch Governor Peter Minuit..

Trade Beads received for the sale of Manhattan

I subscribe to the sentiment in the slogan seen here painted on the glass transom above the Visitor Center doors.  This was the motto of the Sculptor and the Lakota Indians.

After a nice day of touring and hiking outside and then browsing the many buildings of the Indian Museum inside we had a nice meal in the Laughing Water restaurant .  The restaurant is nicely integrated into the museum with a great panorama of windows overlooking the mountain carving.  It has it's  history from when when the sculptor and his wife,  Korczak & Ruth Ziolkowski, often would have guests stay for dinner.

Our server was a retiree living in an RV and working here for the summer before moving on to Texas where he will work an Amazon warehouse for the Christmas season.  I ordered the Indian Taco which I had previously on the Navajo Reservation where it was called the Navajo Taco.  It looks like a pizza with a pizza crust and toppings but consists of  home-made Indian fry bread topped with taco meat, refried beans, lettuce, tomatoes,  cheese, onions and sour cream  

Laughing Water Restaurant windows overlooking the Crazy Horse mountain carving

\

The Mount Rushmore Mountain Carving

After walking through the entry columns leading to the mountain carving there is the Memorial Walkway with flags from all 50 States.

Memorial Walkway, visible on the right is the NC flag

The Memorial Walkway is a nice entrance to the Grand Terrace which offers a spectacular vista of the entire carved mountainside.  This is quite impressive.

Mount Rushmore Memorial from the Grand Terrace 

The Presidential Trail is a 0.6 mile loop that starts and ends at the Grand View terrace.  It's an easy walk which includes 422 steps conveniently getting you as close as possible under the Presidential sculptures.  Photo stops built into the walk afford many opportunities to get the faces at every conceivable angle.

Some of the 422 steps can be seen here making the walk up (or down)  the mountain an easy walk.

Lookouts along the trail provide many opportunities to lookup and admire the sculptures up close.

On the way down we passed the old generator room and compressors used to power the jack hammers and lifts to the mountain.  Of particular interest is the Sculptors Studio which exhibits a variety of sculpting tools and the original scale model used for the carving.  The figures were supposed to be carved from the waist up wearing coats but time and money stopped this effort resulting in what we have today.

Scale Model showing the Sculptors Original Intent of sculptures from the waist up

These plaster face masks were created in order to check the exact dimensions of the carving on the mountain.

Plaster Masks used to measure stone carving accuracy

We enjoyed lunch outside on the patio.  The Mount Rushmore  Memorial can be seen here reflected in the mirrored glass of the Visitor Center. 

Dining Patio of Mount Rushmore Visitor Center with Mount Rushmore reflected in the mirrored glass 

Outside the Park it's quite stunning to drive around one of the mountains that make up the Black Hills and see the carved head of George Washington.

George Washington Bust Visible outside the Park

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Mt Rushmore is 2 miles from downtown Keystone, SD.   Keystone is basically a tourist trap with every kind of souvenir shop and questionable activity known to man.   From the trading posts, cheap Chinese made souvenirs to ziplines, western gun fights, gold mines, train rides and tours, Keystone has it all.  Fortunately Mt Rushmore is isolated from all this garishness.   It stands alone out on beautiful Forest and rock covered lands of the Black Hills.

The Monument was conceived as a way to bring tourism to the Black Hills Region.   Sculptor Gutzon Borglum was given the task of carving the faces into the Black Hills Granite.   The Sculptor chose a mountain with a Southern face to get maximum effect from the rising and setting sun.  He also chose the four Presidents instead of some of the Western figures originally proposed such as Lewis and Clark.

Bust of Gutzon Borglum

Funding

The local congressman Peter Norbeck helped secure enough funding for Gutzon in 1925.   I seriously doubt if this would happen today.   I can't imagine asking for Federal money to deface a mountain, the outcry from environmental groups and tree huggers would be a roar heard from coast to coast.

After first constructing a scale model,  Gutzon began the actual work of carving the mountain in 1927.    The scale model was continually checked manually with a protractor and ruler.  The carving task involved precision drilling into rock to controlled depths, setting dynamite charges to fracture the rock then finishing the carving and smoothing with a jackhammer.  Work was ended in 1941 with just the heads completed even though the original plan called for full figures from the waist up.  A combination of a lack of funding and a country focused on the war effort with the Nation's resources committed to World War II led to the declaration that the sculpture was complete.

Parking

Mt Rushmore is free but a toll booth collects money for a parking pass.  This turned out to be a slow process since the ticket is actually a parking pass good for a year at the cost of $11.  The problem is the license number of your car is printed on the pass.  Since our car was a rental car this was meaningless and just served to slow the process down compared to a normal toll booth where you would just pay and go.  The great news is the parking is in a parking garage which is nicely tucked away into the hillside.  This is a much better solution to the problem of too many vehicles without having to construct a massive ugly above ground structure which would be an eyesore. 

Our rental car in the parking structure

Keystone, SD & Hill City, SD

Our drive from Denver took us through Wyoming and then past Mt Rushmore, traveling 2 more miles to downtown Keystone, SD.  Keystone is the postal address for the Mt Rushmore Monument.  We turned left at the only traffic light in Keystone and followed a winding country road that meandered alongside the old railway and actually crossed the tracks 9 times in the 5 miles to our destination, the Elk Ridge Bed and Breakfast.  We were greeted warmly by our hosts Lesley and Ron.  They have converted their split level home into a bed and breakfast with 3 suites.  Our assigned suite was the Big Jake room for 3 nights.   Despite the many amenities, soaps, towels, etc provided for us the one thing that was iffy was the WiFi.  Since they are out in the country, Internet is via satellite which had throughput equivalent to a dial up modem.   The next morning we actually drove to downtown Keystone and parked in the street to use the free public WiFi which is available anywhere downtown.

Elk Ridge B&B

We asked for a dinner recommendation for the evening and were told the Alpine Inn in Hill City has a limited menu of 2 items and is very popular.  We decided to give it a go.  The winding road our B&B is located on connects Keystone with Hill City.  We now get to try the road going in the Hill City direction.  We easily found the Alpine Inn in downtown Hill City and even found street parking in front.  The late hour of 8 PM worked to our advantage since the restaurant usually has a long line of people waiting for a table.  I initially had reservations about the facility when we arrived at the front door and saw a long stream of extremely obese people leaving.  I was hoping this was not one of those all you can eat buffet establishments.

Alpine Inn

At first peek into the dining room it looked like there were no open tables.   The Hostess took us back through this room to another and then yet another room. I was amazed at the number of dining rooms there actually were.  We were seated in the 4th of four dining rooms we walked through.

The menu consists of 2  items: a Filet Mignon and a vegetarian dish.  We chose the Filet which is available in 6 ounce or 9 ounce portions.   A 6 ounce is good enough which also comes with baked potato. Buttercrunch salad and Texas toast.  The salad is exactly 1/4 of a Buttercrunch lettuce head with a side of ranch dressing.  Our service was prompt but hurried.  The waitress had many tables to serve and did so very quickly, practically throwing our food at us.  A 1/2 liter of a very nice Coastal Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon complemented the meal.  The food, which we wouldn't consider the best we ever had,  was fine and served 2 very tired travelers well.

Downtown Hill City

Oregon Trail

1907 Map of the Oregon Trail

The Oregon Trail was a 2,200 mile long wagon trail the early emigrants used to travel from the Missouri River to Oregon.   One of the states the trail crosses from East to West is Wyoming, going through Hot Springs on the way West.  Since we were going South to North we inevitably would cross the Oregon Trail.   As we approached Hot Springs we found a Historical Marker denoting the Rifle Pits above the Cold Spring campground.  Rifle Pits were used by the white settlers to protect the campsites from possible Indian attacks.

Historical Marker on Wyoming Rt 26

Panorama of Hill with Rifle Pits Overlooking the Oregon Trail Cold Spring campground