When we quickly changed our summer vacation plans from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks to a last-minute Dakotas road trip – and especially when we booked lodging ten minutes from Mount Rushmore – I knew that the famous monument would be on our agenda. We wouldn’t devote an entire day to it, of course, but the kids were looking forward to this. For my part, I had mixed feelings about it. Mount Rushmore has never been high on my list of must-see American landmarks, for one thing, and for another… the idea of seeing four white men’s faces blasted into a beautiful mountain with no regard (at the time the monument was sculpted, at least) for First Nations or Indigenous spiritual needs was… off-putting.

But it was ten minutes’ drive from our campground, and we weren’t planning to spend much time there. We arrived – the place was swarming with people – checked out the visitors’ center, bought bottles of water for the kids (Nugget promptly lost his) and set off for the short, paved trail past the monument.

It’s a relatively easy walk, and the kids liked seeing the rockfall from the blasting. Nugget also got a kick out of looking up George Washington’s nose.

We tried to approach Mount Rushmore from a place of thoughtfulness. We talked about how none of the Presidents who appear on the mountain gave their consent for their images to be used, how the blasting altered the unspoilt beauty of the mountains, and how these hills are sacred to Indigenous populations. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how much the kids retained. But I tried, and now we’ve done Mount Rushmore.

From Mount Rushmore, we drove a short distance over to a very different monument: Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was a Lakota leader who prophesied that he would return to his people “in stone.” Many years later, a Polish artist was commissioned to design and begin construction on the Crazy Horse Monument to honor the leader. The artist’s family still live and work on the unfinished monument today; for years now, only Crazy Horse’s head has been visible – they have just started in on his arm and hand.

We didn’t take the bus ride close to the monument, choosing instead to spend our limited time puttering around the Native American cultural center and listening to an Indigenous musician sing to a small but appreciative crowd (he introduced himself and shared some details about his tribe, and I’m sorry to say I’ve forgotten where he was from – I was a little stressed about something going on at work, and was distracted all day because of that). I couldn’t help wondering if the Crazy Horse Monument would have been finished by now (it’s been a work in progress for decades) or at least further along if the stories, history, and identity of First Nations and Indigenous people were as highly valued as the white faces on Mount Rushmore. Seeing the two monuments back-to-back was a really thought-provoking experiment.

Have you been to Mount Rushmore or Crazy Horse Mountain?