Buffalo

Saturday, July 13, Day 82

As we left our campground this morning, we went through the town of Custer.  It is considered the oldest town settled by European Americans in the Black Hills.  Custer and his 7th Cav were here in 1874 when he confirmed the presence of gold.  By 1875, Custer, the town, (then called Stonewall after Stonewall Jackson) was established.  However, the following year, 1876, MORE GOLD was found in Deadwood Gulch and most miners quickly moved on.  

What keeps the town running is the continuing mining of industrial minerals and precious metals.  And a few festivals and tourism.  So, we catch our first glimpse of Buffalo - not the live type but the artsy type!

However, just a little way out of town, close to the Wind Cave National Park, we spotted the real thing!
In fact, they were on the road in front of us.  They were huge, and in particular one large bull.

He was definitely the alpha guy.  The other younger bulls not only got out of his way, they jumped out of his way as he sauntered toward us.  They are noted to be unpredictable, so we wanted to keep our distance.

This herd is one of only four genetically pure bison herds left.  Some determined conservationists saved about a hundred in the early 1900's, and these buffalo are descended from that effort.  This herd had originally 14 buffalo, turned out on the prairie after having been raised in zoos.  One notable buffalo, called Sandy, became the first "wild" Buffalo to be born in a zoo and die in the wild.

This herd is estimated to be 250-400 animals.  Our big guy walked alongside of us, then laid down in a
classic Buffalo Wallow, throwing dirt over himself.  Back before their  almost extermination there were buffalo wallows all over the prairies.

At the time Columbus landed, there were an estimated 60 million buffalo on the prairies.   They were part of the largest biomass of animals in the world.

While Big Guy kept an eye on us, a younger bull came up to the truck and started rubbing his horns on the bumper.  John put the truck (still running) in reverse, and gently moved backwards, until the buffalo wandered away.   Later, he looked to see if the car had any paint missing, but it was all OK!

As we go through this area, we pass the cut offs to Wind Cave National Park,  the first cave to be designated a national park (Teddy Roosevelt at work again).  Wind Cave has 140 miles of explored caves, the 10th largest in the world.  Who knew?  There is Jewel Cave National Monument, and also the Mammoth Site at  Hot Springs, South Dakota.  We didn't know about any of them, and didn't have time to stop.  But I would definitely go back to explore these areas.  See, South Dakota has enough tourist attractions without blowing up the mountains and putting faces on them!

Crazy Horse

Friday, July 12, Day 81 (cont'd)

A short distance away from Mt. Rushmore is the monument being built to Crazy Horse.  The sculpture was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear in 1929, to show the Indians had heroes, too.  The sculptor was Korcyak Ziolkowski.  

When I first saw this, I wondered why it wasn't further along.     The sculpture was began in 1948, will stand 641 feet  wide, 563 feet high with a head measuring 87 feet.  The piece currently being worked on is the horses head.  

The sculpture had worked with Borglum on Mt. Rushmore.  He and his wife lived nearby and raised ten children, seven of whom work on the sculpture and an adjacent Indian Museum and Cultural Center. Some large donations have been made both for work on the sculpture and to complete an Indian Medical Center.  All of this work is being done with private donations.

Native Americans performed ceremonial dances in the courtyard of the museum.

The Museum and Cultural Center were large and pretty impressive.  There are tours you can take to the

flat area by the head.  Ironically, Crazy Horse never had his picture taken, so the head represents the sculptors image based on oral descriptions.  

One of the daughters who is the sculptor in charge, is modifying the image somewhat. For example, there will not be as large a space under the arm due to weak rock structure.

Once again, the sculpture is not without controversy.  Many Native Americans object to the idea that Henry Elder Bear commissioned the sculpture without any consultation with the tribes.  Many feel that the land is sacred and should not be desecrated by blowing up huge amounts of it.  And, the idea of the pointing finger is anathema to their culture.

"They don't respect our culture because we didn't give permission for someone to carve the sacred Black Hills where our burial grounds are. They were there for us to enjoy and they were there for us to pray. But it wasn't meant to be carved into images, which is very wrong for all of us. The more I think about it, the more it's a desecration of our Indian culture. Not just Crazy Horse, but all of us."^[9]

Whether the family will complete the monument is up to speculation.  But, they do have an impressive complex.  There is also a light show here, but the clouds are gathering, it is going to rain, and we need to find a campground for the night.  We crammed a lot into this day!

Mt. Rushmore

Friday, July 12, Day 81

It's only a short distance from Rapid City, Sturgis,  and Deadwood to Mt. Rushmore.  I had never been there before.  I have early pictures of my family being there -- so much happened before I was born!   One of our ongoing jokes, as my family spoke about their adventures, was to ask, "Where was I?"  "Oh, that was before you were born," was the reply!

The idea for the monument came in the 1920's as South Dakota was looking for ways to increase their tourism, and lure visitors away from nearby Yellowstone National Park.  They came up with an idea of carving heads on the rocks -- mainly of men who built the West; Custer, Lewis and Clark, maybe Buffalo Bill Cody, perhaps the Sioux Chief Red Cloud.  The plan then morphed into a monument to 

great American Presidents and their representation of the history of the country: Birth - Washington; Growth-Jefferson, Preservation-Lincoln; Development-Theodore Roosevelt.   

The rock formations you encounter as you began the climb to Mt. Rushmore give you an idea of what the area looked like before the monument.  

The man chosen to built the monuments was Gutzon Borglum,  an internationally known sculpture who had, among others, carved the largest bas- relief in the world into the granite at Stone Mountain, Georgia.  It features Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and their horses.  It was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and a place for ceremonies by the Klu Klux Klan. 

It was Borglum who chose this particular rock formation, known to the Native Americans as the Six Grandfathers.  While Europeans tended to build the places they considered to be sacred like churches and statues, the American Indians looked for places which were naturally sacred.  This area of the Black Hills was historically linked to the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Kiowa.  As a sacred area,
it was used for making contact with the spirit world and obtaining spiritual power.

So instead of being the Six Grandfathers, the granite hill was named Mt. Rushmore, after a New York lawyer looking after the mining interests of East Coast investors. Almost all of the Indian names for local lands were gone by the late 1800's.

The monument originally was meant to be to the waists, but the money ran out, Borglum died and his son carried on for a short time.  Eventually, the monument was left in this half finished state, although it is not readily apparent if you don't know about it!

The statistics are impressive - each face is 60 feet tall, the eyes are 11 feet wide, mouths 21 feet.  Washington's nose is 21 feet long, the rest 20 feet.  Ninety percent of the sculpting was done by
dynamite, removing 450,000 tons of rock.

This side view of Washington shows an area to his right where the face of Thomas Jefferson was supposed to be.  After 14 months, they realized the rock was too weak and they dynamited it away and began anew on the other side. The 400 workers on the project were primarily men who came for the Gold Rush, which didn't materialize for them, so $8.00 a day sounded really good! 

Mt. Rushmore draws over two million visitors each year and the new visitors center is really impressive. The day we were there, it was mostly Japanese tourists in all kinds of weird poses.  I wonder that they make of it all?

The Indians have their own version of who they think should be memorialized here, if indeed they would have carved up the mountain in the first place. Depending on who is stating their opinion, the Indians are Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Red Cloud and/or Ben Black Elk.

There is a big light show at night, featuring a lot of patriotic music and laser beams across the faces on the monument.  However, it is clouding up, beginning to show signs of nature's own thunder and lightening and are still going to the Crazy Horse Monument.

As we left , I noticed this little tyke who was somehow missing all of the excitement.  What will his memories be?  It reminds me of my youngest son, who fell asleep while we were watching the sunset at the Grand Canyon.  Later, when he woke up at the hotel, he said,  "What happened to that big crack?"  Out of the mouths of babes!

Deadwood - Where are you, Kevin Costner?

Friday, July 12, Day 81, Cont'd

Only a few miles from Sturgis is Deadwood.  This was actually more of what I would consider a western town to look like.  It started out in the 1870's as a result of the gold rush.  The town was illegally established in Indian territory and brought in booze and brothels to serve the local miners.  At its peak, the town held about 5,000 . 

Gold Mining turned to  steady mining and then many years of decline.  Fires  and smallpox devastated the town.  The last brothel was shut down in the 1980's!  Then in stepped people like Kevin Costner and the gambling interests.  Today, Deadwood has a lot of tourism based on its casino's.  So, I guess Deadwood is still Deadwood, just a more modern version!  It now has about 2700 residents.   It did have lots of interesting shops and restaurants.  It looked like an fun place to explore.

Incidentally, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried at Deadwood, along with other  notorious gunslingers too many to mention!

We went over a pass just outside Deadwood, and noticed that the trees are being devastated by pine beetles.  It is such a terrible sight.  Warmer weather causes them to survive and it has been getting warmer in these northern areas, so they are affected.

We are glad we went back to see Sturgis and Deadwood.

Sturgis

Friday, July 12, Day 81

The next morning, after breakfast with the family, we decided to back track a little to see what Sturgis and Deadwood were all about.  Our visit was about two weeks before the big motorcycle rally, which draws about 350,000 bikers.  It was started in 1938 as a racing and stunt event and had 12 participants.

Today, it's a little something else, as this logo from their website depicts!  They actually publish how many arrests they make, and how many motorcycles are stolen each year!  Great fun!  But it does pull in about $800 million to the local economy, so the locals are willing to put up with it.

There were booths, tents, etc. under construction as we drove through.

John liked this bar, which was outfitted with chicken wire so beer bottles couldn't be hurled at pedestrians below.

The main drag is nothing but one huge bar after another.  I guess they need to be big to accommodate all of the bikers.  There are also other big car rallies and other events that seem to run back to back during the summer.  But the Motorcycle Rally is the biggest.

As we cruised down the street, we spotted a big new building at the end.  We turned before I got a picture of it, but was the County Jail!  Guess all that revenue pays for something!  Ironically when I googled for a picture, all I found was mug shots!

Full disclosure - I have several family members who take their Hogs to Sturgis and just love it!

The Devil's Tower and Family Get together

Thursday, July 11, Day 80

Today we are headed to South Dakota, but not before going through a little northeast corner of Wyoming.  I never noticed their welcome signs before - a Cowboy and the Devil's Tower. 

We've seen lots of logging operations along this trip.  This one, near the Black Hills,  logs timber from that dark forest behind it.  It is the dense, dark color of these forests that gave the Black Hills their name. The forest is mostly pine, with Ponderosa Pine being predominant.

Beautiful rolling hills as we  head a little west, looking to the horizon for the Devil's Tower. 

And there it is! Geologists still can't agree on how it was formed.  It may have been the core of a large volcano which thrust upward, surrounded by sedimentary rock.  The sedimentary rock  then eroded, leaving this monolith behind.  On a more mundane level, the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was partly filmed here, causing an increase in visitors, which number about 400,000 per year.

There is red sandstone and siltstone surrounding the rock.  It's really all quite startling landscape -- the red and the green, with this large gray rock in the middle.

That little river is the Belle Fourche River, which is credited with wearing away the sedimentary rock around the Devil's Tower.

Incidentally, the  town of Belle Fourche, population 6,000,  is credited with being the "Geographic center of the 50 States."   I wonder how many geographic centers there can be?

This picture gives a greater idea of the rock and its relation to the surrounding area, including the Belle Fourche River.

There are lots of Indian tribes -- Arapahoe, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, Shoshone -- who consider this rock  part of their spiritual culture.  Most of the native names include a reference to bears -- Bears House, Bears Lair, Lodge, Tipi, Rock.    Devil's tower was a misinterpretation of the Indian name which turned into the English name Devil's Tower.  The Indian cultures don't have a "Devil" per se.  There are also many legends on how the rock was formed.  Here is my favorite:

According to the Native American tribes of the Kiowa and Lakota Sioux, some girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock, fell to their knees, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach the girls. The bears, in an effort to climb the rock, left deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. (Those are the marks which appear today on the sides of Devils Tower.) When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the star constellation the Pleiades.

Devil's Tower is visible from so many places.  It is hard to take your eyes off it.  Theodore Roosevelt loved this place, part of his Western venture.  In 1906, he made it the first declared National Monument.

It isn't too far from Devil's Tower before you are in South Dakota.  In the Black Hills, there are Southern Hills and Northern Hills.  The Southern Hills contain Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, Mammoth Site at Hot Springs.  The Northern Hills contain Sturgis and Deadwood.  Kind of lopsided! 

Those sandstone and siltstone formations continue for a long way. The green grass parts to reveal this really red soil.  It's very pretty. 

We arrived at the home of my cousins Sandy and Virgil Jundt in Rapid City South Dakota.  Sandy's father Sam was my first cousin, son of my Uncle Elmer Williams.   We were fortunate in that their grandsons Logan and Camden were visiting.  So we got to meet them, too!

Virgil and Sandy originally come from Minot North Dakota, but they have made their home in Rapid City for a long time.  Virgil built that huge barn behind them, which houses his prized pickups, motorcycle and a Fifth-Wheeler.  He is a great mechanic and builder and has lots of projects in which he takes great pride.   Sandy has retired from many years in the banking business.

We were so excited to see wild turkeys in their backyard.  Virgil feeds them and the deer, and they aren't a bit shy, except during hunting season!

The deer was a little more retiscent, peeking through the trees and then eventually settling in the grass, never taking its eyes off me.

I was fascinated by the local paper, the Rapid City Journal.   One article was concerning Johnny Depp's offer to purchase the land where the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred and give it back to the Lakotas.  The asking price for the 40-acre parcel is $3.9 million, plus another $1 million for another parcel.  The seller says it's a package deal.  Depp's movie,  "The Lone Ranger" had recently opened. Interestingly, the Lakota say they don't want him to buy it at that price.  They claim it is an inflated price and they have already overpaid for other land they consider to be their sacred lands.  Instead, they want him to give them the money so they can buy a lot of other places to add to their reservation.  I will have to see how this comes out!

In  the same issue of the Rapid City Journal was this article about Kevin Costner offering 1,000 acres he owns in Deadwood, which had been slated for a resort, including a steam-fired passenger train and championship gold course. I think he got involved here after his movie, "Dances with Wolves. " He owns a lot of other places -- bars, casinos -- in Deadwood.

Here's Sandy with her two grandsons.  It was their first extended visit alone with Grandma and Grandpa.  They had lots of great plans! The boys were laying Solitaire, both with actual cards and on the computer.  And, they had a Facetime visit with their parents.

I didn't get a picture of me and my cousins on this trip, so will use one from our visit earlier in the year when they took their fifth wheeler to Lake Meade for the winter.   It's really great, meeting twice in a year, after so many years of never knowing one another.  It sure is good to have family!