Living in South Dakota for three years, seeing Mount Rushmore was on my to do list before I finished college and moved back to Tennessee. I lived on the eastern side of South Dakota and to be honest...it was a pretty boring place at times. I remember taking long drives for fun down the highways and seeing nothing but flat land and not much else. In the western part of the state the landscape is more hilly, rocky, and diverse. Western South Dakota is a beautiful place with more to look at in terms of natural beauty.

Starting The Drive In Eastern South Dakota

My road trip west to see Mount Rushmore started out in the Eastern part of the state near the border to Minnesota. As you can see in the picture above, the land is very flat. When you see this view day after day like I did it's easy to wish for more to see. I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee so all this flat land drove me crazy!

Right Before You See Mount Rushmore You Get Great Views Off The Sides of the Highway

As you can see in these two pictures, the land in the western part of the state is vastly different than in the east. There are lots of trees, hills, rocks, and more. This part of South Dakota is more beautiful in my opinion and I wished I gotten the chance to explore more of the Black Hills and Rushmore area.

A Quick History of Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore was created to attract tourists to South Dakota. The person credited with coming up with the idea to carve a sculpture to attract tourists to the area was Doane Robinson. He was able to convince others this project was worthy of attention and he secured federal funding to start work on what we now know as Mount Rushmore.

Constructed from 1927 to 1941, Mount Rushmore features four U.S. presidents (Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Jefferson) who were chosen because they were seen as most important in expanding the territories of the U.S. Dynamite was a tool largely used to blast rock off of the mountain. Drills and other tools used for carving were then used to etch the faces and their features into rock. The plan was to include more carvings and faces in the mountainside but Mount Rushmore only had the four faces completed before they couldn't continue due to lack of funding.

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My First View of Mount Rushmore

As you drive around some windy roads, Mount Rushmore appears and it's an surreal sight to see in ways. All you see is the natural beauty of the world and them BAM!!! You see these giant faces appear on the mountainside. I remember my first thought seeing it was "I thought it would be bigger." When you see Mount Rushmore in movies or in pictures you see in magazines or history books they are always zoomed in. From a distance on the highways the sculpture seemed smaller than I thought it would be.

The highway goes right in front of the sculpture and as you ride by you realize how big it actually is. It's hard to imagine being a worker helping to carve those faces. Back in the 1920s through the 1940s you didn't have advanced technology like we have now. I would have never risked my life back then to hang by cables and simple wood structures to work on the sculpture. It amazes me that people were able to carve such detailed faces using dynamite and hand tools.

Leaving Mount Rushmore Behind

The highway going past Mount Rushmore is surrounded on both sides by rocky mountains. As you drive past Rushmore, as we did towards Wyoming, the rocky mountains disappear and you are once again greeted with open sky. Just a little ways past Mount Rushmore you see other attractions to lure tourists to the area to capitalize on the popularity of the nearby towns as tourist destinations.

My Favorite Tourist Trap: Bedrock City: Aka Flintstones Theme Park!

Built in 1966, Bedrock City is located in Custer, South Dakota. I unfortunately lost all but these two pictures to a hard drive failure years ago but Bedrock City is a pretty neat place to see. If you are a fan of the Flintstones it is a theme park featuring places you might see in the cartoon city. It has rock homes like Fred Flintstone would live in and you can see sculptures of the cartoon characters throughout the park. It's cute and was unexpected to see right after seeing the wonder of Mount Rushmore. I never would have known there was a real "Bedrock City" unless I'd driven past Mount Rushmore.

Thanks for taking a drive with me!

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