BenTha'er-Horizons

South Dakota

What Is In A Name Again

We are back at "What Is In A Name" with Mt. Rushmore. It is such a cool place to visit and awe-inspiring. This information comes from an Interesting Facts email I get daily. Enjoy the information!

The iconic mountain that bears the giant stone faces of four U.S. Presidents is named after a lawyer from New York. In 1884, Charles E. Rushmore was sent to the Black Hills in South Dakota to secure land for tin mining (on lands considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux). He spent many weeks exploring the area with guides, and at one point, he inquired as to the name of an impressive peak nearby. Since the mountain had no name, a prospector with him replied, “We will name it now, and name it Rushmore Peak.” From then on, it was referred to as Rushmore Peak, Rushmore Mountain, or Rushmore Rock. When the national memorial was finished in 1927, it officially became known as Mount Rushmore.
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Crazy Horse Memorial

From the Epoch Times:
Almost everyone has heard of Mount Rushmore. But far fewer know that just 8 miles away, work is now taking place on the world’s largest sculpture—orders of magnitude larger than that homage to American presidents. The carving is called Crazy Horse, and its roots are a world apart from modern-day politics. It’s so enormous that if you were to pile the four presidential heads of Mount Rushmore on top of one another, they wouldn’t even reach halfway up the colossal work in progress.
This memorial is truly epic. Its carving began 75 years ago and was sparked by an unlikely friendship. 
Chief Henry Standing Bear, a local Native American, was a legendary character in Native culture; this visionary Lakota Indian, a great public speaker and thinker, was passionate about finding new ways of preserving his people’s history and tradition. But it was his cousin, a war hero by the name of Crazy Horse, who was revered by the Lakota as a truly iconic warrior.
When Standing Bear caught wind of plans to build a memorial in honor of Crazy Horse in Nebraska, he appealed to the one spearheading the project. The rightful place for such a carving, he said, was the Black Hills in western South Dakota, which are considered sacred by the Lakota. This small, isolated mountain range covered in pine forest is the oldest in the United States, and Native Americans have inhabited the region for almost 10,000 years.
It’s hard to know just when—or whether at all—the Crazy Horse Memorial will be finished. If it eventually is, it would measure 641 feet (195 meters) long and 563 feet (171 meters) high; and the dream started by Standing Bear and Mr. Ziolkowski 76 years ago, will at long last be realized
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CrazyHorsemonumentsm

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Bison Rising

We are back in Lebanon, OR as of around noon yesterday. We got a good night's sleep and it is a sunny, beautiful, and hot Saturday in mid-May. It is so pleasant. We are getting the outdoor furniture out to sit and enjoy, at least until it rains heavy.
I want to include a photo I took in North Dakota near Medora at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Driving through, it was a sunny, warm day with a bison grazing on new spring grass alongside the road. I was able to get some good photos with my new Zoom lens with the Nikon Z6. Let the spirit of the bison or American Buffalo rise in these United States.
Buffalo small size
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Mt. Rushmore Facts

And now it is the opportunity to give some background on Mt. Rushmore. We were able to see Mt. Rushmore on a beautiful sunny morning for a short time. It was awe-inspiring. I would go there again in a heart beat. The Black Hills of South Dakota are spectacular and I can see why the Native Americans revered that geographical area as part of their history and culture.
"The iconic mountain that bears the giant stone faces of four U.S. Presidents is named after a lawyer from New York. In 1884, Charles E. Rushmore was sent to the Black Hills in South Dakota to secure land for tin mining (on lands considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux). He spent many weeks exploring the area with guides, and at one point, he inquired as to the name of an impressive peak nearby. Since the mountain had no name, a prospector with him replied, “We will name it now, and name it Rushmore Peak.” From then on, it was referred to as Rushmore Peak, Rushmore Mountain, or Rushmore Rock. When the national memorial was finished in 1927, it officially became known as Mount Rushmore."
Mt Rushmore clear
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The Next Few Days

Later this afternoon we will be setting out for travel by plane and car we haven't done for almost 2.5 years. The pandemic has had its impact on seeing new places or getting together.
We will be flying through Seattle early tomorrow morning to Minneapolis then rent a car to drive to Aberdeen, SD. This allows us not to sit in an airport for hours with masks and we can then also see what the countryside looks like in western Minnesota and eastern South Dakota.
It will be so nice to see David, Renee, Nicolas, Ryan, and Jessie. A bunch of boy hugs will mean a lot to us. It will be hard to say how long before we will be back there again.
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