Day 9: The Black Hills

Unlike Sioux Falls, Rapid City did not possess any discernable rapids.  However it did serve as a jumping off point for exploring the Black Hills.  We visited Mount Rushmore, of course, which was much cooler than I expected--while the view isn't much that you haven't seen in a photo already, the visitors' center display is great, with information on how the project was originally intended as a tourist attraction, how Borglum insisted on having an inscription on the mountain because he intended the display to be meaningful for future civilizations (he never got around to it, but the Parks Service put some engraved plaques in the Hall of Records on the mountain and marked it so future archaeologists would notice it).  There's also lots of cool stuff on how the mountain was actually carved...lots of dynamite, somewhat lax safety standards, and a crew that was eager to work for 35 cents an hour hanging off a rock face during the Depression (about equivalent to modern minimum wage).  I also learned that Borglum planned to do a similar project in Georgia for Confederate leaders, but he got fired and, pissed off, destroyed the work he had done so far before leaving the project, causing his employers to get an arrest warrant for him and for him to flee the state.  (The carving was later completed by someone else and it's still there!)  Wikipedia has other info not mentioned in the display--like Borglum's father was a Mormon with two wives.  When he moved to a state where polygamy was illegal, he decided Boglum's mom was his less favorite wife and just kicked her out of the family.

After Mt Rushmore, we went to Crazy Horse Monument.  Crazy Horse is amazing, but probably not in the way the founders intended.  It is supposed to be enormous--like ten times bigger than Mt. Rushmore--it is planned to be the largest sculpture in the world.  It was started by a carver, Ziolkowki, who worked on the Mt. Rushmore crew.  He worked on Crazy Horse for his entire life, by himself, with almost no funding...in the video he talks about having to climb up and down the mountain up to 9 times a day to restart his broken compressor.  That's right, he was trying to build the largest sculpture in the world by himself.  After his death, 7 of his 10 children and his wife are continuing the project.  One thing to note is that this project was begun in 1935, only a few years after Mt. Rushmore's carving.  It is maybe about 5-10% complete.  The video notes that the project refused federal money because Ziolkowki believed in free enterprise.  In fact, this is probably the only American Indian museum where you will see a bust of Ray Kroc, champion of free enterprise.

 The obviousness of the fact that this sculpture will never get done seems totally clear to everyone except the guys in the introductory video about the carving.

A model of what Crazy Horse would look like if finished:

Since Crazy Horse memorial isn't much to look at, being about 5% done and all (I didn't even post a photo of it because they don't let you get close enough to take a photo that would come out on my camera), the museum is the main draw here.  It is awesome.  There are a lot of super neat artifacts but they are very badly curated with no explanation of what they are or hilariously vague explanations ("Throwing the ball. The last sacred rite is a game that represents the course of a man's life, which should be spent in trying to get the ball.  The ball represents Waktan-Tanka."  And yes, I photographed that sign so I could quote it verbatim for the blog.)  The entire tone is totally worshipful of the past and Lakota religion with no attempt at objectivity, even to the point of obscuring what actually happened.  I enjoyed the heck out of it.  One of my favorite exhibits was on Navajo Code Talkers, because they have the entire front page of the newspaper, which includes an article on how teens who make an abstinence pledge are being rewarded with free big band dance classes and laser tag.

I learned that once glass beads were available via trade, beadwork became more popular than its predecessor, porcupine quillwork, for obvious reasons (wouldn't you rather work with beads than porcupine quills?)

A bunch of random stuff in a recreation of Ziolkowki's cabin (I don't think it was supposed to be a literal recreation, unless he actually had a chandelier and a grand piano and a giant harp in there, it wasn't clear).  The sign says "two-faced SOB" with absolutely no explanation.

There's also a newspaper article on how they allegedly have in their collection the original glass beads used to buy Manhattan.  The article quotes an expert who says that the beads are almost certainly fake because it's unlikely that Manhattan was bought with beads in the first place, but the museum believes they are real.

After Crazy Horse we headed out to Custer State Park.  Michelle and Andrew recommended the Needles highway, so we drove it...wow.  It's a crazy road full of switchbacks and dramatic mountain views and tiny narrow tunnels and over-friendly chipmunks.  Definitely worth the trip.

No, Alex, it's not pavement.  It's a chipmunk!!

After Needles we went on the Wildlife Loop Road.  There were deer, more buffalo, and some very menacing donkeys directly on the road who I am pretty sure wanted our lunch money.  (Apparently idiots--like the people in the car ahead of us--feed them, hence their behavior.)

On leaving Rapid City, we ran into a brief but terrible hailstorm.  Fortunately some good came out of it:

Next we headed to Deadwood, SD!  I was pretty excited about Deadwood since I loved the TV show.  Unfortunately the museum was closed by the time we got there, and the town of Deadwood itself is casino after casino after casino...I couldn't tell if I thought this was faithful to the historical legacy or destroying it.  We did visit Mt. Moriah cemetery, however, and I got to see the graves of Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, and Seth Bullock, as well as the Jewish section (unfortunately Sol Star isn't buried there, but it's still cool to see Hebrew writing on these wild West graves).  The cemetery isn't very exciting in terms of headstones...they are all in basically the same, very minimalist, style...but it was still neat to see.  It was also a very gorgeous walk and it turned out that the cemetery was full of deer browsing among the graves (we spotted a herd of eight, including fawns, and two others off the side of the hill).

We finished up in one of the (two?) hotels in Sundance, WY (aka, no, not Sundance Sundance, that one's in Utah).