Mount Rushmore/Crazy Horse in SD

                                 Mount Rushmore National Memorial

 
It is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, a granite batholith formation in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota, United States.
Sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).
Construction on the memorial began in 1927, and the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. Upon Gutzon Borglum's death in March 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum took over construction. Although the initial concept called for each president to be depicted from head to waist, lack of funding forced construction to end in late October 1941.
It took 400 men and 11 years to complete the sculpture but it is a testament to hard work, great engineering and art.

The carving of Mount Rushmore involved the use of dynamite, followed by the process of "honeycombing", a process where workers drill holes close together, allowing small pieces to be removed by hand. In total, about 450,000 short tons (410,000 t) of rock were blasted off the mountainside. You can see all of the rock tailing's still piled in front of the sculptures.

Fun fact In a canyon behind the carved faces is a chamber, cut only 70 feet (21 m) into the rock, containing a vault with sixteen porcelain enamel panels. The panels include the text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, biographies of the four presidents and Borglum, and the history of the U.S. The chamber was created as the entrance-way to a planned "Hall of Records"; the vault was installed in 1998.
It is directly behind Lincolns head, originally it was planned to hold National Archives and letters of our nations beliefs, treasures and important documents but was later turned into a hall of records and then abandoned with what few things that had already been added, the way to the cave may have become unstable, or maybe those national treasure movies are right and there really is something more in there.

                      Crazy Horse Memorial

 

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota. It depicts Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is far from completion.  If completed, it may become the world's largest sculpture, as well as the first non-religious statue to hold this record since 1967, in comparison to the Rushmore monument in size you could fit all of the Rushmore sculpture into the Crazy Horse head portion alone. The work load is larger with less people, Rushmore had 400 men and 11 years, whereas Crazy Horse has had only 15 men over the last 60 or so years, the first 5 years where only Korczak Ziolkowski was working on it himself, then later by his son's with him and now since his death his son's and the other few workers.

Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S. Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people. His most famous actions against the U.S. military included the Fetterman Fight (21 December 1866), and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25–26 June 1876). He surrendered to U.S. troops under General Crook in May 1877, due to the fact that his wife has TB and needed medicine, he was fatally wounded by a military guard while "allegedly" resisting imprisonment at Camp Robinson in present-day Nebraska, though it known that he thought he was being taken to meet someone of higher rank to disscuss a peace treaty, when he realized they were taking him to the fort prison he reached for his knife and was shot in the back and leg by the armed men, he was then place in the jail where he died of the wounds. He ranks among the most notable and iconic of Native American tribal members and was honored by the U.S. Postal Service in 1982 with a 13¢ postage stamp as part of its Great Americans series. 

I personally think he would be insulted to be honored by a .13 cent stamp but he probably would appreciate the memorial of himself. 

This trip was really fun and I enjoyed learning more about a culture and our nation, I wish evryone a good week and a happy life, until next time be kind to one another.