Colossal, Magnificent, Unbelievable, Awe-inspiring Mount Rushmore is just 25 miles away from our KOA campground in Rapid City. WOW! The carving of Mount Rushmore began in 1927 and finished in 1941. A team of over 400 men carved the mountain. 90% of the more than 450,000 tons of the granite rock removed was done so with dynamite. No one died during construction. Each president’s face is 60 feet high. The sculpture is eroding at the rate of 1 inch every 10,000 years.

20 miles from Mount Rushmore is the Crazy Horse Memorial. Carved into a pegmatite granite mountain that is 6,500 feet above sea level, the finished sculpture will be 641 feet long and 563 feet high. The sculpture was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. The yet unfinished work began in 1948.