Laninga's Travel Blog

Mount Rushmore National Monument…..

is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, near Keystone, South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture’s design and oversaw the project’s execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. Mount Rushmore features 60-foot sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). The memorial park covers 1,278.45 acres and is 5,725 feet above sea level.

We visited twice, once in the evening for their impressive night ceremony and sculpture lighting, and one in the daylight when we got some very nice full sn images.

Crazy Horse Memorial….

… is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior, Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is far from completion. If completed, it may become the world’s largest sculpture as well as the first non-religious statue to hold this record since 1967.