After cruising to Alaska and visiting Glacier National Park, what do you do to top that. Well, I don’t know if it tops it, but we visited three mountains–Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monument in South Dakota. They were all spectacular in different ways.
I had never been to Mount Rushmore, so we decided to head there. On our way, we stopped in Billings, Montana, to get our tires rotated on the Jeep and to go to the temple. It was so good to be in the temple again. I find so much peace there. It is great to just forget about the clock and just enjoy the peace and spirit that exists in our beautiful temples. I am so grateful for them.
Then we headed to one of the more unique mountains I have ever seen, Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. What a cool monolith! It is so hard to do justice to it in words. You come driving to it and it is the only thing around–this tall tower of columnar pinnacles. The Belle Fourche campground is super nice with great big shade trees and it is basically at the base of the Tower. In fact, for my morning walked, I hiked from the campground to the base of the Tower and up a bit.
The tower is definitely magma that cooled and formed the unique columns. In fact, it is the largest example of columnar jointing in the world. There are several theories about how it came to be formed and how it ended up sticking up into the landscape as the tallest thing for miles. The theories are numerous and no one really knows for sure. All I can say is that God created an awesome sight when this was formed. There is a trail that goes all the way around the base of it. It is an easy hike and quite enjoyable. After the hike we saw a flock of turkeys walking through the parking area.
There was a large prairie dog farm at the base of the tower as well. That was fun to watch the prairie dogs. There were also pronghorns and deer in the area in abundance. It is a beautiful area and well worth the visit. I hope to come back someday to spend a bit more time. We were just there one night.
Then we headed to Mount Rushmore. I have to say that I prefer God’s creations, but Rushmore is quite an impressive feat of man’s skills. It was bigger and yet somehow smaller than I had expected. When you are up close to it hiking on the trail at the base of it, it seems very large, but when you are approaching it from a distance, it seems quite small in the scheme of things.
I find it interesting what motivated the sculptor. It took almost twenty years to complete the sculpture. Although the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, would have said it was not completed. Gutzon, himself, died in March of 1941 and the final drilling on it was done in October of that year by his son, Lincoln Borglum. His death and the possibility of involvement in World War II caused the funding to dry up, so the project was declared complete. The original designs for the mountain involved much more detail below the heads which was never funded.
We enjoyed our time there and learned a lot. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln all made complete sense to me as being represented in the mountain, but I never could understand Theodore Roosevelt. With this visit I understood why Roosevelt. Washington represents the birth of the United States. Jefferson represents growth of the United States as he doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase. Roosevelt represented the development of the United States. He was president during a rapid economic growth time frame and was responsible for the Panama Canal which assisted in the rapid economic growth. Lincoln represented the preservation of the nation. These are all excellent choices to represent those things. Borglum did an excellent job designing it and executing the removal of tons of rock to reveal the faces of these presidents.
After visiting a symbol of the United States, we chose to visit a symbol of the peoples who were here before the United States existed. Crazy Horse Memorial is not complete yet. It will be an amazing sculpture when it is finished representing the native indigenous people. But the memorial is way more than that. It is a museum and culture center working to preserve the culture, traditions and heritage of the North American Indians. The museum is really excellent with some cool artifacts and very educational. They also have a university for Native Americans.
We also attended a performance of hoop dancing. It was so cool to see how they take the hoops and while dancing weave them into different shapes around their body. They are very talented artists.
Chief Henry Standing Bear was the one who got the sculptor to agree to do the very ambitious project. He said, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes also.” The sculptor they recruited was Korczak Ziolkowski. His family is still involved in the project today, though he has passed on. They started the memorial with a dedication ceremony in June 1948 and they still have a long way to go. It is an admirable project, but they have to continually raise funds for it. The chose Crazy Horse as the person to portray because of his amazing leadership. Crazy Horse was a maternal cousin of Chief Henry Standing Bear as well. They chose the Black Hills because they are sacred to the Lakota Indians. I very much feel for the native peoples. They have been treated badly for many, many years. I hope they are successful in completing what will be the largest sculpture ever in history. It will be awesome when it it finished. Here is the model of what the final sculpture will look like. Unfortunately, at the rate they are going, we will all be dead before it is finished. I hope they can get the funding to complete it more quickly. We did a little bit to help fund the work by visiting.
