July 2017: Epic Road Trip I: Part II--Days 3, and 4: Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, and The Chapel in the Hills

I know, I know, in the last post I said I was done with Devil's Tower, but I can't get enough of it.  This is the last view we had of it before it went out of sight.

Day 3:  Mount Rushmore National Memorial and The Crazy Horse Memorial
After we broke camp and visited with the prairie dogs, we headed to South Dakota.  It is just over two hours from Devil's Tower to Mount Rushmore.  We arrived at Mount Rushmore in the early afternoon and spent an hour or two at the monument.  There were museums and an interpretive trail that we spent some time on.  The Hot Chick and I and our two oldest daughters had been to Mount Rushmore once before, in the late eighties.   When we visited the first time, there was very little in the way of visitor amenities, rather it was just a straight walk to the viewpoint, some photo ops and it was done.  This was on that same trip when we were moving to Minnesota for grad school, so we really didn't have much time for much else.

From 1988 to 1998, there was a major improvement to the site which added a gate and a promenade.  Several gift stores and ranger outposts were also set up on the site.  A colonnade was added with square columns which each bore the names and flags of three states, based on their date of admittance into the Union.  I don't know if the museums were there when we visited in 1988, as we were in a hurry and I think we got out of the car, walked up to the viewpoint looked at Mount Rushmore and then someone probably said something like, "Ok, we've seen it, now let's get on the road."

This time when we visited, we had plenty of time to visit and see all of the museums and other parts of the memorial.  We even stopped in the gift shop!  This time around it almost seemed like American History Disneyland.

Mount Rushmore
Carving on Mount Rushmore began in Fall of 1927 and concluded in Fall of 1941.  It was carved by about 400 workers under the direction of Gutzon Borglum.  Borglum was originally from Idaho and was the son of Danish immigrants who settled in Idaho because of their Mormon faith.  The Borglums later left the LDS church and moved to the midwest where Gutzon studied sculpture.  He created a head of Lincoln that was displayed in Washington DC by Theodore Roosevelt.  He was later commissioned to sculpt Stone Mountain, Georgia which is a monument commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and celebrated the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan.  After a dispute with the people who commissioned the mountain carving, Borglum smashed his plaster models and all of his work was dynamited off the face of the mountain, paving the way for another sculptor to leave his mark.

What became of this failed venture was that Borglum learned how to carve mountains which made him a natural choice to carve Mount Rushmore.  There were originally many people who had ideas for who should be immortalized on Mount Rushmore, including Lewis and Clark, Sacajawea, Susan B. Anthony, Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill, Crazy Horse and many others.  Borglum had the final say and chose presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt because of their roles in the westward expansion of the United States of America.

Controversy
Mount Rushmore and the rest of The Black Hills of South Dakota were originally part of the Great Sioux Reservation, but after gold was discovered there and the Sioux war of 1876, the government took The Black Hills away from the tribe.  The Lakota consider The Black Hills to be sacred land and the idea of the presidents likenesses carved there is viewed by some as an abomination.  To counter the carving on Mount Rushmore, the local Lakota tribe has commissioned an even larger carving of Crazy Horse which will be an even larger sculpture than Mount Rushmore when it is completed.  The heads on Mount Rushmore are 60 feet tall, Crazy Horse's head is 87 feet tall.  Crazy Horse, when completed will be the largest mountain sculpture in the world.  More of that later.

The opening gate of Mount Rushmore.  Finished in 1998

First view of the POTUSi

Bronzed Borglum

Promenade of the States.  Not the official name, I was just feeling pretentious

Gives an idea

The fam but me.  Someone has to take the pictures

Plaster studies in one of the museums

Heavy equipment including the anvil that fell on Wile E. Coyote's head

They liked to carve this guy

Plaster studies of what the mountain was supposed to look like.  They got the heads done and said that was enough

POTUS PRIMUS

POTUS SEDICIM

Thar be's Idaho's state flag yar

Isn't that where they grow corn?

Side view. 

The Crazy Horse Memorial
Seventeen miles away from Mount Rushmore is the work in progress, Crazy Horse Memorial.  When Mount Rushmore was being carved, Henry Standing Bear approached Gutzon Borglum and campaigned to have him add Crazy Horse's head to Mount Rushmore along with the four presidents.  Borglum did not honor his request.  Frustrated, Henry Standing Bear approached Korczak Ziolkowski about carving Crazy Horse on another mountain nearby.  Standing Bear commissioned Ziolkowski to do the work and they began the process of carving the mountain in 1940.  Ziolkowski was one of the stone carvers on Mount Rushmore.  Standing Bear had a vision of the project that would include an Indian School and other interpretive elements.  He chose to fund the project privately rather than take any federal monies because he believed that if the government gave money, they would take over the project and possibly co-opt it for their own ends.  He probably wasn't wrong.  Several times, the Federal government has offered millions of dollars and always the project managers have declined.  Because it is privately funded, it is taking much longer to carve than Mount Rushmore did.

In 1953, Henry Standing Bear passed away, knowing that the work was in progress.  In 1982, Ziolkowski passed away.  He believed if the head and face were done first, it would stir up interest and cause people to donate more.  His widow saw to the completion of the face.  She passed away in 2014.  Her children and grandchildren are carrying on the work.

The project is not without controversy, as all good projects are.  Many Native Americans believe that it is a desecration to carve the mountains.  Others, who are related to Crazy Horse do not consider it an honor because they were not consulted about the project before it was begun, as per Native tradition.  Crazy Horse was never photographed, on purpose so Ziolkowski had to interpret what he looked like by reading accounts of what other people said he looked like and studying the faces of his relatives.

When Crazy Horse is completed, it will be the second tallest sculpture in the world and the largest carved mountain in the world.  I hope I live to see it completed.  It will be epic.

We got to Crazy Horse and purchased a bus ticket to see the mountain.  After that, we kicked around inside the museum.  I am assuming they asked us not to photograph the exhibits as many museums do because there are no photos on my camera roll of the interior of the museum.  If there was no prohibition, I'd have been all over that.

To the photos.

First view of the mountain

Closer.  You can see the chalk outline on the mountain of the eventual horse's head

Better angle, showing the face

I think this was one of the original shacks for the carvers

The family was there

So was I

Another cool angle of the memorial

Plaster carving of what the memorial will eventually look like

From a different angle

Day 4:  Chapel in the Hills
One of my high school buddies lives in Rapid City, South Dakota.  When we planned this trip, we decided to visit him at his home.  He has a delightful family and at supper, we ate wild boar.  I'd never had wild boar before.  It was pretty tasty.

We spent the day with him while his wife was at work, then we had supper with them.  He suggested we take a tour of a stave church in Rapid City.  We didn't know what a stave church was, so he explained that it was an exact replica of a medieval wooden church in Borgum Norway.  This church belongs to the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  It is a very special place.

There is a prayer garden behind the church with sculptures that are intended to guide the viewer to be introspective and to commune with God.  I was glad my buddy took us there.  I enjoyed it for many reasons.  The spiritual nature of the place, the care and detail that went into carving and building the place.  It was a very interesting part of the trip.

To the pictures.

Runestones

Museum with Ole and Lena

Exhibits inside

My buddy and me.  Hadn't seen him since high school.  Reconnected on Facebook

Gift shop

Defender

Exquisite carvings

The stave church

The Reverend and his wife

Very cool entrance

The timbering in the ceiling was amazing

From the gallery to the nave

More coolness

There were carvings everywhere

Like this

Another view of the stave church

The bell to remind people when to come to services

The prayer trail

The chapel from the prayer trail

My buddy, me and my son

The other kids at a gazebo in a park in Rapid City

Boys and trees

Why South Dakota is cooler than other states

We had a really nice time on days 3 and 4.  It was awesome to reconnect with my friend from high school.  He and his family made us feel so welcome.  Good people.  I'd like to visit them again.  His wife is a quilter, my wife is a quilter.  Naturally they got along.

Days 5 and 6 next!

For Part I of the Epic Road Trip, click this Link

For Part III of the Epic Road Trip, click this Link

For Part IV of the Epic Road Trip, click this Link

For Part V of the Epic Road Trip, click this Link