Spring Break 2010: Black Hills

Mike and I took a few days off at the beginning of University of Wyoming's spring break to drive to the southwest corner of South Dakota to see the sights. We had a great time! The weather was nice -- 40-45 degree highs and lots of sunshine -- and the Black Hills were just beautiful.

Here's a shot from Custer State Park. When we got up to higher elevations, it was really misty. There are so many pine trees that the mountains look incredibly green, even at this time of year.
This is Pactola Lake, between Custer and Deadwood. As you can see, it's frozen solid.We stayed in Custer, SD. Here's a view from Main Street. :)
Our first real stop on the trip was Mt. Rushmore. It was quite impressive. We were interested to learn that the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, had planned a much more complete sculpture with chests and arms for the presidents. The mountain carving began in 1927 and was expected to take five years and $500,000. Carving and blasting continued through the 1930s (and the Great Depression) and the federal government allocated $1 million to the project, but the project came to an end in 1941 with the death of the sculptor and the U.S. involvement in WWII. Isn't it interesting to think that this national icon was supposed to take a much different form?
On day 2 of our trip we went to the Wind Cave (pictured above), which is the 4th longest cave in the world. We had a cool tour of some of the caverns. It's called the wind cave because there is a very strong wind that, depending on air pressure outside the cave, either blows into or out of the cave. On the day we visited, the wind was blowing into the cave at 30+ miles per hour!
We also went to the Crazy Horse memorial on day 2. This is another major mountain carving in the Black Hills that depicts the Indian warrior Crazy Horse. It's a work in progress that was started in 1947 and is not federally funded. Apparently the government offered money to the sculptor, but he was a big believer in free enterprise and said he would only accept private donations. The sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, seems to have been quite a character. He lived in a tent next to the mountain when he first started work on it. His wife and 10 children have continued the work since he died in 1982. As you can see in the photo above, the face of Crazy Horse is completed and his arm above the horse's head is taking shape.
This is a scale model of the Crazy Horse mountain. It will be carved in the round, unlike Mt. Rushmore. The story is that Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear asked Ziolkowski to carve the mountain to "show the white man that the red man has heroes, too." In some ways it seems a bit sacrilegious to see the Black Hills, a sacred place to the Lakota, blasted away for the 4 dead presidents and for Crazy Horse. The unmarked Hills are more beautiful and more spiritually powerful than the ones that have been dynamited. At least that's what I think.
Also on day 2 we drove to Deadwood, the famous Old West mining town. It's in this narrow little gorge, with houses built way up the hillside. Casino revenue has allowed the town to do a lot of restoration, and there are some fabulous old buildings from the 1880s.
Here's main street in Deadwood. Around the Black Hills (and around the West) there are several little towns, notably Keystone, that are built to look like the mythic "Old West." Deadwood is the real deal and it feels authentically gritty.

On our last day in South Dakota, we went to the Badlands. The landscape there is beautiful in an otherworldly sort of way.
We took lots more photos than the carefully selected ones here. If you'd like to see all the various views of Mt. Rushmore, including plenty of up-the-nostrils shots, see our Black Hills Flickr set.