Mount Rushmore

Well I finally had time to load up our final stop during our Labor Day Weekend.

                                                                Mount Rushmore

Awesome site to finally have seen. We stayed for the night lighting of the mountain. That was pretty cool to see also. While we were waiting of the show to start we spotted a Horned Mountain Goat. See if you can spot him in one of my pictures. We were excited to see this because we had been looking for one of these animals our whole time out here in the Rocky Mountains.

This drive through the mountain gave us a great view of the famous Rushmore Mountain.

Who are those two new presidents on the Mountain??

Do you know how Mount Rushmore got it's name??

See the bottom of the blog for the answer.

Here we rode a ski lift up to the top of a small mountain to get a better view of the presidents.  Then we rode an alpine slide down. FUN FUN FUN!!!!

Mount Rushmore at Night

Mount Rushmore is named after a New York City attorney. Charles E. Rushmore was sent out to this area in 1884 to check legal titles on properties. On his way back to Pine Camp he asked Bill Challis [a local resident and guide] the name of this mountain. Bill replied, "Never had a name but from now on we'll call it Rushmore."

NOW, THAT'S HOW MOUNT RUSHMORE GOT ITS NAME  



Badlands in SD

From Wyoming we drove over on deep into South Dakota to see the Badlands. If you have never been in South Dakota let me warn you, stop often for gas. South Dakota is just wide open land, with NO cell phone reception. If you were to break down on one of their long  roads you would just be out of luck.

After driving for about 2 hours we arrived at the Badlands National Park. They are not so bad, they are actually kind of pretty to look at. When I posted a pic on my face book page of our day, someone posted back, “Looks like another planet” and they were so right. It’s hard to explain what the land looks like. Maybe my pictures will help you be able to get a mental picture of what we saw.

This would be a defiant stop if you were driving through this area.

Good bye Badlands, here we come Mount Rushmore!

Crazy Horse

Our visit to Crazy Horse was full of Native American history. So here is just a brief history of how the Crazy Horse Monument came to be.

 

Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear stated, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, also” (In reference to Mount Rushmore). So he invited Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to the Black Hills to carve the red man’s hero, Crazy Horse. Korczak arrived in the Black Hills on May 3, 1947 to accept the Indian’s invitation. When he started work on the mountain in 1948, he was almost 40 and had only $174 left to his name. Over the years he battled financial hardship, injuries and even age. A strong believer in the free enterprise system, he felt Crazy Horse should not be built with taxpayer dollars. Two times he turned down federal funds.

 He knew that this project was larger than any one man’s lifetime, so he left detailed plans to be used with his scale models to continue the project. He died in 1982 and his wife Ruth and children have continued the project.

 
Crazy Horse Memorial is the World’s Largest carving in PROGRESS, as you can see by my pictures, its not quite done. Funding comes from admission prices, money spent at the gift shop, and private contributors. So progress is slow. I wonder how much more will be accomplished when our grandchildren visit?

Why did the Indians chose Crazy Horse for the Mountain Carving? Crazy Horse was a warrior Indian that stood up for the Indian way of life. He had been disappointed by the United States President for breaking the Treaty of 1868. He was disappointed by the government agents who did not bring treaty guarantees for taking over their land. He was disappointed by the way he saw his peoples’ lives ravaged and destroyed. He fought to keep the Native American way of life. So this memorial was created to the spirit of Crazy Horse and to his people. When the monument is complete it will have Crazy Horse pointing out into the Black Hills to answer the white man’s question, “Where are your lands now?” In response Crazy Horse points and says, “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”

Crazy Horse was murdered under a flag of truce by an American soldier who stabbed him in the back on Sept. 6, 1877.

We stayed past dark to witness the Laser-Light Storytelling. They call their laser show, Legends in Lights. For those of us who have seen Stone Mountain’s light show, this one is similar

End of day, good night Crazy Horse. Tomorrow we will say hello to South Dakota's Bad Lands.