Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse

We had found an “OK” spot (not great, but would have done the trick) to camp in the National Forest, but thanks to the heat of being waaaay down here at 4,000 ft elevation, we chose to home base out of an RV park in Custer, SD so the A/C in the Airstream could keep Kerri cool enough to function (she doesn’t do so well in the heat). We had full and unlimited power for the work week, a luxury we had not had in some time. The shore-power does give the opportunity to get a lot of work done, so by mid-week I was not only caught up, I was well ahead. And with some free time on my hands I went out for some exploring.

Right down the road from Custer is Crazy Horse Memorial, an enormous 560+ foot high carving right into the granite mountain. A single man was hired by the local tribes to create this memorial back in 1947. This man worked the remainder of his life – passing away in 1982 – on the memorial. His wife, and children still work on the memorial today. The entire project has been funded by donations and admission fees and is still funded today by those means.

After viewing the short movie in the Visitor’s Center, the theater doors spill the viewers out to a large room lined with large windows. One mile into the distance is the very mountain we were all just introduced too in the movie (although it is easily seen from the highway as well). The size is hard to grasp from this distance but you can see the heavy equipment  on it (in use at the time) for scale.  I took my photos, walked around the displays and shops before getting back on the road for stop #2 of the day.

Not far down the Mount Rushmore National Memorial (my 77th National Park visited) which consisted of a larger parking lot then the memorial itself. Here, you get the honor of paying $11 to park, walk the few hundred feet (past numerous trinket and ice-cream shops) to an overlook of the Memorial, fight your way through the crowds – I actually had to give an elbow to an elderly woman – just to snap a photo between the hundreds of self-sticks and and tripods flailing about. I barely got the few photos I did before my anxiety topped the scale and I ran back to the truck and got out of there as quickly as possible. I do worse in crowds – especially tourist crowds – then Kerri does in the heat.

While I am no fan of the destruction of natural areas and both of these memorials did/do just that; destroy nature to memorialize a few good(?) men. While I was compelled to go see both thanks to my OCD about visiting all the National Parks, and other places, along my travels I am happy that I will never have to return to either and wish neither existed in all honestly. I’d much rather have the pristine mountains that both memorials ruined then to see the large carvings of these men.

If you too feel compelled to see these places some day, allow me to offer a bit of advice. I realized after that I went about these two sights the wrong way and should have seen Rushmore first. Not only would it have been less crowded earlier in the day, it is actually the less grand of the two (if I could call it grand at all). The faces on Rushmore stand about 60 feet tall. The entire Rushmore memorial – with it’s infinite government funding – will fit inside the head of the Crazy Horse Memorial which has a much better backstory to it as well.