Black Hills
The Black Hills are an isolated mountain range that rises out of the Great Plains in western South Dakota and extends up to Wyoming. The land is considered sacred to the Native American people and the Lakota name for the range is Paha Sapa. The Black Hills cover some 5,000 square miles and the highest point is Black Elk Peak at 7,244 feet. The 1874 expedition of the US Calvary lead by Col. George Armstrong Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills and that lead to the establishment of many of the towns. When mining riches ran dry, the Black Hills became a major tourist destination in the United States. Today, millions of visitors come to the Black Hills annually for such attractions as Sturgis, Deadwood, Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Custer State Park, and the Crazy Horse Memorial.
Deadwood, South Dakota
In 1874, a U.S. Army expedition led by Col. George Armstrong Custer discovered gold in the southern Black Hills. The following year there was a larger gold discovery in Deadwood Gulch and soon miners along with fortune seekers flocked to the area. The town of Deadwood was founded in 1876 and it was pretty lawless from the start. The men and women who came to Deadwood in those early days were people of fortitude and strength who didn’t mind hardship on the road to fortune. Some of the more famous characters in Deadwood’s history were Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. In one of the most famous events of the West, Wild Bill was gunned down while playing cards at Saloon #10 on Main Street in Deadwood.
Like many towns of the Old West, the originally Deadwood was destroyed by fire in 1879. The buildings we see today were mostly built in the early 1900s. All throughout the 1920s drinking, gambling, and brothel establishments flourished in Deadwood illegally behind closed doors. When the gold riches and people began to disappear from Deadwood around 1920, the town leaders looked for ways to revitalize their economy: the answer was tourism. The first Days of ’76 was held in 1924 and it was a celebration of the town’s historic past. The event is complete with parades, western revue, and a rodeo all which continue on annually to this day. Gambling was legalized in 1989 and the last brothel, Pam’s Purple Door, was shut down by the federal government not until 1980.
Main Street of Deadwood today is very touristy with many hotels, gaming halls and bars. There are stage coach rides and actors re-enacting some of the famous gunfights on the streets for tourists during the summer months. Deadwood has several historical museums and I visited Days of ’76 Museum as well as the Adams Museum. One of the newer attractions in town that is quite popular is the Deadwood Brothel Tour which walks you through the workings of one of the legendary brothels that operated illegally for over 100 years. Although it might be a little bit too touristy for my taste, Deadwood holds a place in the history of the West and is worth a visit when in the Black Hills.
Crazy Horse Memorial
Crazy Horse or Tasunke Witco was born into the Oglala Lakota tribe around 1840. His father was a powerful medicine man and by the time he was in his mid-teens, Crazy Horse was already a respected and feared warrior. He would ride into battle with a single hawk feather in his hair, a rock behind his ear, and a lightning symbol on his face. In 1876, Crazy Horse led a band of Lakota warriors into battle against Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th US Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn where they killed Custer as well as 289 soldiers/officers. The following year, under a flag of truce, Crazy Horse went to Fort Robinson to conduct negotiations with the US Army. Whether it was a translation error or just a disagreement, those talks quickly fell apart. As Crazy Horse began to leave the fort, he was detained and threatened with imprisonment. He drew his knife and a soldier lunged at him with a bayonet killing the famed warrior.
Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was an orphan born in Boston who overcame a difficult childhood to become an accomplished, award-winning sculptor. His success caught the attention of two individuals that changed his life forever. In 1939, he was invited to assist Gutzon Borglum at the Mount Rushmore site. About the same time, he was contacted by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear who proposed that Ziolkowski carve a memorial to the American Indians in the Black Hills. He took the offer under consideration, but WWII broke out and Ziolkowski served in the Army where he landed on Omaha Beach. Following the war, he was offered to sculpt war memorials in Europe, but Ziolkowski had chosen his life’s path.
In 1947, Ziolkowski returned to the Black Hills to meet with Chief Standing Bear and other leaders to discuss the memorial. They had chosen the subject of the memorial to be Crazy Horse for he was a great warrior, always put his people first, and had never surrendered nor signed a treaty. He was symbol of Native American strength, pride, and defiance. Ziolkowski accepted the project without a salary saying that “by carving Crazy Horse, if I can give back to the Indian some of his pride and create a means to keep alive his culture and heritage, my life will have been worthwhile”. The first granite was blasted in 1949 and Ziolkowski, along with wife Ruth and ten children, lived on the site where they had a saw mill and dairy farm to fund the project.
Today, the Crazy Horse Memorial is a work in progress. The memorial is an ambitious project and will stand 563 feet tall and 641 feet long when completed. The 9-story tall face was completed on June 3, 1998 and work has completed on his hand with finger pointing to lead warriors into battle. During my visit to the site, I learned that work is about to begin on Crazy Horse’s flowing hair as well as the horse’s mane with the delivery of a specialized crane. The memorial has always been a privately funded project, Ziolkowski refused two $10 million grants from the federal government, and sits on 1,000 acres of privately owned land. A foundation started by the Ziolkowski family is overseeing the continuation of the project following the sculptor’s death in 1982. The site also includes a Native American cultural museum and university. Unfortunately, I will not live to see the completion of the Crazy Horse Memorial but it sure will be fun following the progress!
Mount Rushmore National Memorial
“A monument’s dimensions should be determined by the importance to civilization of the events commemorated.”
– Gutzon Borglum
Two years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, sculptor Gutzon Borglum was born to Danish immigrants in St. Charles, Idaho. He studied art in Paris and New York and quickly became an accomplished portrait sculptor. During my travels I’ve seen another one of his sculptures; the North Carolina Monument at Gettysburg. In 1923 he was approached by representatives in South Dakota about carving heroes of the West in the Black Hills. At the time, Borglum was working on the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia. Once federal and state legislation authorized the memorial, he quit that project and headed to South Dakota. Borglum choose the Mount Rushmore (named after a New York lawyer who had mining interests in area) due to its size, orientation to the sun, and the presence of fine-grained granite. In order to appeal to a national audience, Borglum proposed US presidents as subjects.
Borglum chose the four presidents to memorialized the founding, growth, preservation, and development of the United States. George Washington signifies the struggle for independence and birth of the Republic; Thomas Jefferson for the territorial expansion of the country; Abraham Lincoln for the preservation of the Union and equality for all citizens; and Theodore Roosevelt for increasing the role of the United States in world affairs and fighting for the rights of the common man.
Carving on the mountain began in 1927 with around 400 laborers working on the project during the height of the depression. The workers earned $0.35 to $1.50 per hour based on the job they performed. Initially Borglum’s plan was to not use explosives, but he soon found the rock was too hard and ultimately over 90% of the carving on Mount Rushmore was performed with blasting. Finishing work was performed with drills and jackhammers by men suspended by harnesses. As dangerous as the work was, there were few injuries and no fatalities.
Washington was the first portrait completed in 1930. Originally, Jefferson was to be to the left of Washington but the granite proved to be flawed in that location. After 18 months of work, Jefferson’s original face was blasted off the mountain and his portrait was moved to Washington’s right. The 1936 dedication of Jefferson’s portrait was attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1937, a bill introduced in Congress called for Susan B. Anthony’s portrait be added to the memorial. However, legislation already passed funded only the portraits of the four presidents and the Anthony proposal ended. That same year, Abraham Lincoln’s portrait was completed on the far right of the memorial. The portrait of Theodore Roosevelt proved to be the most challenging for Borglum’s team due to its location on the mountain, however it was completed in 1939 just as the memorial was transferred to the National Park Service. In March 1941, Gutzon Borglum passed away and that left his son, Lincoln Borglum, to oversee the completion of the memorial which occurred on October 31st of the same year.
The original cost of carving the memorial was $989,992.32 with the federal government covering 85% of the cost and the remaining from private fundraising. A lot of people don’t know that Borglum’s original plan included a vault called the Hall of Records to be tunneled behind the portraits to store important national documents, but that was abandon in 1939. The Mount Rushmore site underwent a major $56 million redevelopment in the 1990s where a museum, viewing terrace, Avenue of Flags, restaurant, gift shops, and parking garages were built. The monument is extremely busy in the summer months, over 2 million visitors annually, and I sure was happy I went early in the morning.
My favorite part of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial was the Presidential Trail which is a boardwalk trail that loops around from the Visitor Center and gets you much closer to the base of the memorial. From this vantage point, you get a much better view of the carving and can actually see some of the drill markings. Obviously, in my opinion, Borglum got it wrong – Teddy should be up front!
Some numbers on the presidents’ portraits: faces are 60 feet tall; noses 20 feet long; eyes 11 feet wide; and mouths 18 feet wide.
Wind Cave National Park
A little-known national park in South Dakota is Wind Cave which sits at the southern tip of the Black Hills. The name comes from the Lakota belief that people emerge from the spirit world to the Earth’s surface through a passageway called Maka Oniye, “breathing-earth”, or Wind Cave. The park was established in 1903 by Theodore Roosevelt becoming the seventh national park and first to protect a cave system. The park celebrates two worlds: on the surface where the prairie meets the Black Hills and below the surface where you’ll find the seventh longest cave system in the world.
On the surface, Wind Cave National Park is unique because it is where the tall grasses of the prairie meet the Ponderosa pines of the Black Hills. The park overs breath-taking views of rolling hills and granite outcroppings. The park is rich with wildlife including prairie dogs, pronghorn, and bison who were re-introduced to the park in the mid-1930s with animals transplanted from the Yellowstone herd as well as the Bronx Zoo.
The cave system was first discovered by mineral prospectors and starting in 1890 an adventurous teen by the name of Alvin McDonald began exploring and mapping the cave as well as offering tours of the cave. As tourism to Wind Cave expanded, many became concerned it would be destroyed and that is what led to it gaining national park status in 1903. Wind Cave has over 105 miles of known passages and scientist believe that the cave system is much more extensive. One of the things that Wind Cave is known for is its extensive boxwork structures which are criss-crossing fins of calcite covering the caves ceilings and walls. During the Great Depression, workers with the CCC made major improvements to the cave to allow safe tourism including concrete walkways and a 208-foot elevator shaft.
Unfortunately, the cave was closed this season while contractors are installing a new elevator system. It was still nice to visit Wind Cave National Park and learn more about one of the least known of the national parks.
Here are some bonus pictures from my campground and ride on the 1880 Train through the Black Hills…
