August 21 – We returned to Mt.
Rushmore to see what it looked like in daylight. Our campground hosts had
strongly recommended the “monumental breakfast” (scrambled eggs, country fried
steak, sausage gravy on a biscuit, hash browns and milk) and for four dollars
it was quite a feast. The visitor’s center complex was expanded in 1998 and
the new facilities are very nice. There is a trail that allows visitors to
walk to the base of the mountain and look up the noses of the presidents. We
went on a ranger led walk of the trail and learned all kinds of neat stuff
about the Memorial.
The memorial was originally proposed by Doane
Robinson of the South Dakota State Historical Society as a way to get more
tourists to come to South Dakota. He envisioned giant carvings of western
figures like Custer, Lewis and Clark and Buffalo Bill. He contacted Gutzon Borglum
a sculptor who had been working on another massive stone carving and proposed
the idea. Borglum, a very patriotic man, liked the idea and was commissioned
to make a model but, instead of using western figures his original model
depicted three presidents (Jefferson, Washington, & Lincoln) carved from
the waist up. The idea of carving presidents was even more popular than
western figures and after some work funding was secured for the Memorial. The
location of the sculpture was chosen by Borglum because of the size,
orientation, and the hardness of the stone and on August 10, 1927 carving
started. The original model (there were seven versions of the Memorial) had
Washington in the center with Jefferson to the left and Lincoln on the right.
Washington was the first to be carved and while carving they found that the
stone on the lower part of the mountain wasn’t good enough to carve so the idea
of doing the figures from the waist up was abandoned. Jefferson was the next
to be carved and they discovered a fault in the stone after his face was half
done. Rather than risk having the sculpture crumble in the future, Borglum had
Jefferson blasted off the mountain and a new model of the sculpture was made
with Jefferson to the right of Washington and Lincoln to the right of
Jefferson. During the initial blasting a small fault in the stone was found
and it was determined that this fault would wind up on Jefferson’s nose. Again
Borglum didn’t want part of the sculpture to fall off so he changed Jefferson’s
position slightly and tilted the head back so that the fault ran under the
nose. Many people say that Jefferson has a “visionary” look, as if he is
looking out into the future. This look is the result of the head tilt.
Lincoln, Borglum’s favorite president was next to be carved and Roosevelt (who
got added in along the way) was started shortly thereafter. Roosevelt is set
much farther back in the mountain than the rest of the presidents because the
stone where he was to be carved was weak and they had to blast deeper into the
mountain to find good stone. In 1941, after
14 years of carving (90%
of which was done with dynamite) funding cuts and Borglum’s sudden death (at
age 73) caused work on the Memorial to stop. Borglum’s son Lincoln had been
supervising much of the work and while he was capable of seeing the Memorial
completed it was decided to leave it unfinished.
In addition to the Memorial, there was also a visitor’s center which showed a 20 minute film on the memorial and had exhibits on the history of Mt. Rushmore, Borglum, the workers and the tools used in carving the mountain. The studio where Borglum created his models was also open and inside was the final model that was used to create the Memorial (Borglum would destroy a model and make a new one each time the design changed). There was also a small display of some of the tools used to do the detail work on the carving. Also on display was Borglum’s model for what he called the “Hall of Records”, a large chamber behind the Memorial that was to act like a time capsule to explain the Memorial to people of the future. While blasting on the Hall started in 1938, it was never completed.
Still slightly behind schedule we hit the road
and headed north towards Interstate 90 which would take
us by the famed
Wall Drug on our way to the Badlands. As soon as we got onto I-90 the Wall
drug billboards started popping up everywhere. Finally exit 109 came and we
got off to experience what they called “true Americana”. The complex covers
well over one half of a standard city block and has many shops (all
owned
by Wall Drug) that sell T shirts, mugs, hats and anything else that can have
Wall Drug printed on it. For entertainment there are a number of coin operated
bands featuring singing gorillas, cowboys or chickens. One of their new
attractions is a dinosaur head that roars and blows smoke every twelve
minutes. There is also a
courtyard where you can
pose on fiberglass animals or stick your head in cut outs. The scale of the
operation is unbelievable and it really did start out as a plain old drug
store. The owner bought the store during a depression and ran into hard times
when the residents of the small town couldn’t afford to buy prescriptions. He
discovered a spring behind the store and came up with the idea of advertising
free ice water to lure travelers from the main highway some 20 miles away into
his store. He put up one homemade sign and the next day a few people stopped
in so he put up another and then another and so on. Today there are countless
signs along the highway reminding visitors to stop at Wall Drug. The business
has grown a little too.
After buying some T-shirts and tacky gifts we
got back on the road and headed for the Badlands National Park which was only a
half hour away. As we traveled the highway we saw lots of homemade billboards saying
“feed the prairie dogs, FREE”. Stacie got excited and wanted to feed them.
Fortunately the prairie dog colony was at the same exit for the Badlands and on
the way. A giant concrete prairie dog marked the colony which was next to a
little country
grocery store. Wandering around the colony (which had
outgrown its fenced area) was free, but signs asked you to use only “unsalted
prairie dog food” which was available at the store for 50 cents a bag. We
bought a bag which was nothing more than a big handful of unsalted peanuts.
Stacie then went out to the colony and started calling the cute furry
critters. Strangely enough the prairie dogs weren’t afraid of people and came
out of their holes for a snack. After a while they got very used to us and
were eating off of Stacie’s shoes. We stayed for a while and after our supply
of nuts was exhausted we continued on and entered the park. We went to the
campground and picked a site. This was “prairie camping” and there weren’t any
shade trees so it was a lot like camping at a commercial campground. We set up
camp and then went out for a hike on one of the shorter trails near the
campground. Having had a full day we called it a night.