Mount Rushmore

I found this picture recently  It had to have been taken in the late 60's because I was definitely going through an awkward teenage phase!  It occurred to me that in this photo my mother is about 13 years younger than I am right now!

 I remember this family trip.  We first went to Monticello, Utah to visit my Boyle cousins and then up through Utah and Wyoming to Yellowstone.  We stayed in the Old Faithful Lodge and loved it!  This whole trip was made in my Daddy's little Volkswagen Beetle!  I remember feeding Oreos to the bears in Yellowstone.  There are people somewhere that have a great photo of 3 bears leaned up against the side of our little car begging for cookies while I fed them out the window!  Bad I know but it surely was fun!  After Yellowstone we headed east and stopped at Mt. Rushmore before turning south towards home.  Sweet memories!

I read an article in one of my travel magazines about Mt. Rushmore so thought I'd share a few interesting facts:

• First a question:  In what direction do the presidents face? north-northwest, southeast, or west-southwest
• The idea for the carvings was conceived in the 1920's to draw tourists to South Dakotas.  After hearing about a project to chisel Confederate leaders' faces on a mountain in Georgia, the sculptor, Gotzon Borglum was invited to the Black Hills.  
• Borglum picked the 4 presidents and the granite expanse that became the memorial.  
• In 1925 Congress agreed to finance the project.  Borglum and hundreds of workers spent the next 14 years and a million dollars creating the monument. (Serious money for our government in 1925)
• Today, nearly three million visitors come each year to ogle the massive busts, each as tall as a six-story building.
• The original plan was to showcase Lewis and Clark, Chief Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill, but Borglum decided the four presidents made more significant subjects.  (Good decision - I am not even sure who Chief Red Cloud is)
• Workers carved 90% of the monument with dynamite and finished with hand tools and air hammers.
• Thomas Jefferson's face began on the right side of George Washington, but Borglum blew that up and carved a new head on the left. 
• In 2005 the memorial got its first cleaning ever.  Workers spent three weeks pressure washing the dirt and lichen.
• In 1937 Congress proposed adding suffragette Susan B Anthony to the memorial, but lack of rock suitable for carving nixed the plan.
• Some 400 people worked on the memorial. One of the workers, Jack Payne, was fired for yodeling.
• Just 15 miles away a stone profile of Crazy Horse is taking shape on a mountainside.  When completed it will dwarf the four presidents. 
• Each presidential nose is 20 feet long.
• With an erosion rate of one inch every 10,000 years, it will take a long time for Rushmore to fall apart.
• Visits to the memorial spiked 15% the year following the September 11 attack.
• Finally an answer - Mount Rushmore faces southeast, gaining maximum exposure to the sun.