Hotdogger Blog

A Breathtaking Piece of Art

One of the many, many perks of driving cross country in the Wienermobile is getting to see places you’ve never seen before. For instance, I haven’t really traveled much out West, so on my journey towards Montana I was taken back by the beauty of the wide open terrain of the West. Another breathtaking beauty I was able to see was Mount Rushmore in Keystone, South Dakota. Unfortunately most of the attractions were closed for the season, but we still got to drive up to memorial and walk around.

I’m still in awe as to how Gutzon Borglum and his crew were able to carve out such intricate details in the rocks and create this beautiful monument. I learned that the faces were created by using dynamite and blasting each face into an egg shaped formation. Then each face was carved by using a scaled model of the memorial, where the faces would be from those of a 465 foot tall man. Fun facts that I also learned about the memorial are that each face is the size of a six story tall building, it took 14 years to carve all of the faces, and the workers had to climb 506 steps daily to get to the top of Mount Rushmore to continue carving.

The Avenue of Flags leads from the concession building to a lookout terrace of the memorial. All fifty states and six territories have a flag represented in the Avenue of Flags. And each pillar that the flags are hanging from list the states and territories with their date of statehood on them. Walking through this and then looking out at Mount Rushmore is sure to increase anyone’s patriotism.