The American West Part 8: In the Black Hills of Dakota

The town of Deadwood began in the 1870s as an illegal settlement because it lay within the territory granted to Native Americans in the 1868 Treaty of Laramie. The treaty had guaranteed ownership of the Black Hills to the Lakota people.
In 1874, Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Hills and announced the discovery of gold at French Creek. This triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and gave rise to the lawless town of Deadwood.

The town attained notoriety for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok by Jack McCall who was arrested after trying to hide inside Goldberg’s.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial was carved into the granite face of the mountain by Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln. The monument features the 60-foot heads of 4 former presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. It is a spectacular sight standing against a bright blue sky back drop.

Work began in 1927 a stopped when funding ran out in 1941. Originally each president was to be depicted from head to waist.

It was easy to spend a long time staring at the faces because the longer that you did, the more detail you could see.

George Washington

Abraham Lincoln

A more contentious monument is the Crazy Horse Memorial commissioned by Lakota Chief, Henry Standing Bear, and to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski starting in 1948.

Ziolkowski died in 1982. The entire complex including visitors centre and museum is owned by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation. Ziolkowski's wife Ruth and their ten children remain closely involved with the work, which has no fixed completion date. The face of Crazy Horse was completed and dedicated in 1998