Tuesday, May 31 More of Black Hills

If it wasn’t for writing this blog, we probably wouldn’t have any idea what day it was.  Ardith really likes the Wrangler Cafe because it is such a community gathering place.  Jim is fine with it.  The staff is really nice and the food is good, if not exotic.  Its entrance is probably 50 yards from our room.  This morning, Jim had a big bowl of oatmeal with blueberries and Ardith had French toast and sausage.  Neither of us could quite finish.

We got ourselves moving early this morning because we wanted to catch an old-timey train that was supposed to leave at 11 from the town of Keystone, which is near Mt. Rushmore and we had to purchase tickets at least 45 minutes early.  We also wanted to see some of Mt. Rushmore beforehand.  We went to the depot which is in a souvenir shop.  The woman working there said that the actual departure time would be 11:15 and that the girl selling the tickets wouldn’t be in until 10:15 or so, but the clerk made a reservation for us.  She also informed us that it was 8:15 AM.  We thought it was 9:15.  We failed to recognize the time change in the middle of South Dakota and have been an hour early the past two days.  When we arrived at our motel room Sunday, Ardith thought the clock was wrong and reset it. 

 

 This gave us 2 hours to tour Mt. Rushmore.  Jim had read that the light was best before 10:30 AM and it was great while we were there.  They charge $11 to park your car (but the pass is good for a whole year) but admission is free.  The visitors’ center is quite good.  It tells the extensive history of the conceptualization and construction of the monument.  The construction’s incredible dangers were well illustrated.  Workers used jackhammers while suspended long distances in boson’s chairs.  Remarkably, none of the 400 workers were killed.  The monument was the idea of the South Dakota state historian.  The work directed by sculptor Gutzom Borglum and his son Lincoln.  It was begun 1927 and finished a month and a half before World War II began.  The father had visions of it having bodies and not just heads of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, but he died 6 months before the last head was finished.

We also went to the sculptor’s studio where the last of eleven 1:12 scale (one inch to one foot) models was displayed.  Plans changed several times due to the physical characteristics of the granite and Borglum made new models to reflect reality.   The ranger used a volunteer to illustrate how the models were used atop the mountain to guide the work on its face.  

Jim decided the monument still had room for a 5^th great person and depicted it with his camera.

Next we returned to Keystone, purchased our tickets and had a snack.  The girl who was working in the snack place was quite charming and chatty, but had no clues about geography or the difference between geology and archaeology.  While we were just finishing up, we heard the train whistle.  Ardith hurried across the street to get a place in line.  Jim scampered up some stairs to get a good photo viewpoint.

The train operates on a former mining branch of the Burlington Northern Railroad.  Our train was pulled by the only Baldwin 2-6-6-2T engine still in service.  The engine is articulated, meaning it bends in the middle.  It is an oil powered steam engine.  There are water towers at both ends of the 10 mile line and it refills each trip.  Since there was no turntable or wye, the engine decoupled from the front of the train, switched to a parallel track, then attached to the other end, so he would be going backwards and we forward.

There were 7 cars on the train.  On the way to Hill City, we rode in a car that was built in 1913 and saw service in 3 other railroads.  It had stained glass above its windows.

The trip goes up and down grades that are between 4 and 6 percent (relatively steep) and lets you peer into lots of homes, ranches, old mine entrances, and natural areas along the way.

When we got to Hill City, we saw the town’s athletic fields completely inundated.  They had 6 inches of rain in 10 days and the streams were all massively overflowing their banks.

We had a very light lunch (Ardith: hot dog, Jim: nachos) then walked around the area where rolling stock awaiting restoration was being restored.  This is in conjunction with the South Dakota Railroad Museum.  Jim would have loved to pay a visit, but there wasn’t enough time.

Jim and Ardith separated during this.  Before doing so, the consulted on which car they would ride on the return trip.  Ardith said “any car that doesn’t have the screaming child from the trip up”.  They decided on a converted car that had originally been designed to carry water and ice for crews.  There were only about a dozen people on the car, but 10 minutes into the trip, we realized that the screamer (a girl about 3 or 4) was among them.

Yesterday, there were 2 mysteries we pondered at Custer State Park: there were lots of freshly cut trees down and there were areas where the trees were dying and turning brown.  We found the answer to both at the Mount Rushmore Visitors' Center and on the train.  The pine bark beetle has been attacking the forests of the Black Hills.  One of the most effective ways to control them is to vastly thin out the trees.  The ones that are left have far less competition for sun, water and soil nutrients.  After they cut trees and take away the useful logs for lumber, they put the leftover branches in big piles to be burned in the winter when forest fire danger is low.

As we were driving to the Crazy Horse Memorial, Jim saw an interesting rock formation and had Ardith stop so he could get a picture.  After looking a bit more carefully, he summoned Ardith out of the car, so she could see the profile of George Washington from Mount Rushmore.  The light was just right for it, but was poor for the main view of the monument.

Like Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial is a massive stone carving.  It was the idea of a Lakota chief to honor the heritage of all Native Americans.  The mid-afternoon light was just right for the Crazy Horse Memorial.  When we passed by early in the morning, it was in the shadow of its mountain.

The memorial is being funded entirely by fees ($10 per person admission) and donations (lots of opportunities presented).  The original sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowsk, was adamant about refusing government money.  For the first few years, he did everything with his own money.  He lived in a tent for 7 months (including winter) while he built his studio / residence.  He had worked on Mount Rushmore for several years.   Work was started on the monument in 1948 and still has many years to go.  Korczak died in 1982 and work is being carried on by his wife and 7 of his 10 children. Crazy Horse’s head is 87 feet high, compared to 60 feet for each of the presidents on Rushmore.  If it is ever finished, it will be the world’s largest sculpture.  Work on the finger is scheduled to start Friday by 10 volunteer mining engineers from Canada.

We took a tour of the grounds.  We had two guides, both Lakota.  One was a very animated 21 year old female, the other a young male in his late teens who hardly spoke a word.  The young woman had a constant smile on her face.  The tour led through a myriad of ways to spend or donate money, but also was informative.  The foundation that oversees the site has ambitions far beyond finishing the monument.  They have established the Indian Museum of North America, which has a lot of mostly contemporary artifacts.  It doesn’t appear to be well curated, but there are a lot of nice object.  

 They have also established a university.  Last year, their first, they had 20 students in a summer-only program that gives 12 credits that they claim will be accepted by any US university.  This summer, they expect 36.

One important piece of the tour was the scale model of the expected finished product.  It is of scale 1 to 37 vs. the 1 to 12 for Rushmore.

They also took us into the sculptors’ studio.  There were several pieces in clay, marble and wood by Korczak.  We also noted a bust of Wild Bill Hitchcock by 2 sculptors: one of Korczak’s daughters and the other we speculated to be the grandson of Gutzom Borglum, designer of Mount Rushmore.

We needed to stop 6 times today for road construction.  Something we have done before and expect to do many more times this trip.

An important non-touring task is laundry.  There was a very nice laundromat that we could almost touch from our room.  We returned to the Wrangler Cafe for our last dinner there.  Ardith had steak and Jim had a huge buffalo burger smothered in chili, onions and cheese.