Wednesday, October 6, 2010

October 5, 2010 Carving Day

Hardin Mt,  Outside Crow Reservation on the Little Bighorn River

Today was spent viewing man's insatiable apetite to carve nature into his own image, or that of others.  I saw the Crazy Horse monument and Mt. Rushmore.  I stopped at Crazy Horse first, and thought it would not be interesting.  However, it turned out quite the opposite.  First its scale.  All of Mt. Rushmore would fit into the left cheek of Crazy Horse.  Second the man who began carving it was an incredible person, who was great friends with Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds.  He refused any money from the government and believed in total independence and self sufficiency.  He married a woman 20 years younger, had ten kids, 5 boys in the hopes that they would help him do the work, which they did, and now continue to do.  Seven of the 10 are still there working on the project and one, girl doing her own sculpting.  He was prolific in work, including building a tomb for himself and his wife on the property.  He was asked to work on the project by the chiefs based upon his winning work from the New York Worlds fair.  He worked under Borglund on Rushmore, but it appears they came to odds over techniques.
Here are a few pics.



Then on to Mt. Rushmore.  Of course impressive but I was gone after a brief look and tour of the gift shop.  The only picture that would not be typical is that when driving in from the direction I did there was a single view of GW.  Here it is.



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