Sun. May 20th: SOUTH DAKOTA: MOUNT RUSHMORE

It is an absolutely beautiful day with perfect temperatures, beautiful sunshine, and incredible surroundings at this incredible KOA.  We took our time this morning and let the kids play around all over the KOA.  They had an  all you can eat pancake breakfast for $2.50 and they were thrilled.  They went swimming, played mini golf, played on the play ground, and jumped on the jumpy pillow . . . they had a blast. 

We went back to Mount Rushmore and they finished their Junior Ranger book after watching the movie and looking at all the exhibits. Originally Mount Rushmore was an idea thought of by state historian Doane Robinson who thought of carving giant statues in South Dakota’s Black Hills.

He wanted the sculptures to stand at the gateway to the west where the Black Hills rise from the plains, that we drove through for hours, to the Rockies.  He imagined the tall, thin peaks of the Rockies to transform it into a row of Indian leaders and American explorers who shaped the frontier.  Master sculptor and artist Gutzon Borglum was hired.  He had made his name known through the sculpting of the Stone Mountain memorial, in Georgia, in 1915, remodeling the Statue of Liberty torch, sculpting the apostles of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, a seated Lincoln in Newark (which is the same one we saw at Lincoln’s train station in Springfield), and an oversized Lincoln bust for the United States Capitol.   Borglum scouted out a location in the Black Hills and found the 5,725 foot Mount Rushmore, named in 1885 after the New York lawyer Charles E. Rushmore.  It was a broad wall of exposed granite facing the southeast to receive direct sunlight for most of the day.  Borglum envisioned four U.S. presidents; the one’s representing the growth and expansion of America, from colonial times to the 1900’s.  George Washington, the father of this country & first U.S. president; Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, third president, and genius of the Louisiana Purchase; Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th president, who promoted the construction of the Panama Canal, and began causes like conservation of natural resources and economic reform; and Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th president, and whose leadership during the Civil War ended slavery in America. 

The work began in 1927 taking a total of 14 years and  only six years were spent on the actual carving.  The project was interrupted because of money and Borglum personally lobbied the government for money and was given  $836,000 of federal money toward the total cost of almost $1 million dollars.   Borglum started with sketches in plaster and then transferred his models to the mountain with his “pointing” machine.  A metal shaft was placed at the center of the models head and attached at the base of the shaft was a protractor plate which marked the degree, and pivoted to measure the angle from the central axis.  The weighted line hung from the bar and slid back and forth to measure the distance from the central head point and the vertical distance from the top of the head.  The only shaping technique available to the carvers was the removal of the stone using dynamite to blast away the weathered rock and reach the granite for carving.  An egg shape was made for the head and then workers swung by cable seats called Bosun chairs.  First they used pneumatic drills to honeycomb the granite with closely spaced holes to nearly the depth of the final surface.  Then the men bumped away the drill holes and lines with pneumatic hammers to create detail and a smooth, white surface.   The movie and museum was fascinating to actually watch how the details of the faces were done.   Washington’s head was dedicated in 1930, then Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937, and Roosevelt in 1939.  Borglum died in March of 1941 and the final touches of the sculptures were finally completed in October of 1941 with Borglum’s son Lincoln supervising  the completion.   

The presidential trail walk was a great way to see the faces close up!!

We left Mt. Rushmore to drive to Custer State Park so we could see some Bison.  Unfortunately the sun was going down and the drive around the park had steep hills so we wisely chose to turn around without seeing the bison we were looking forward to seeing.  They were all probably up in the hills for the night anyways!!  We started on our drive to Gillette, Wyoming, which is 2 hours west.  Randomly, after about a half hour of driving along the freeway, a little turtle came walking out into the road, towards our car.  Ahhh . . . Shelley and I both screamed lightly and she swerved a little to miss him. 

We drove 2 hours, which was really 3 ½ hours in the dark hills, to Gillette, Wyoming.   When we arrived at the Walmart we were staying at in Gillette, Wyoming we discovered that the street it was on was Douglas Highway!!  Isn’t that hysterical??  Our families were truly meant to be together!!  J