Crazy Horse, Carhenge and the Corn Palace by Campbell Jefferys

Like everyone in the region, I’d come to see Mt. Rushmore, but South Dakota has a lot more treasures than just the ‘Shrine of Democracy’.

America’s mid west conjures up a lot of cliches: dirt roads, one-horse towns, tumbleweeds, pubs with swinging saloon-style doors, kids going to school barefoot, and farmers still using oxes to plough their fields. In other words, backward, behind the times, isolated and forgotten. But out in America’s heartland, the ‘Roadside Attraction’ is alive and well, up to date, modern, and in some cases, bordering on the bizarre.

To get out there, I rented a car in St. Louis, a Chevrolet Lawnmower that was completely incapable of climbing the slightest hill, and whirred like a chainsaw above 60 miles an hour. Given the distance between attractions and towns, and the limited bus and train service, motorised transport of some description is mandatory out here. And pertol is so cheap, it’s like buying bottled water.

Convoys of Winnebagos and campervans line the highways in both directions; lost souls puttering along in search of the ultimate roadside attraction and the best truckstop food north of Texas. The Winnebago drivers wave to each other and honk their horns, finding comfort in their elite group, that they are not alone in their mad pursuit. The Chevy Lawnmower struggles to keep pace with them, but chugs along valiantly.

The road stretches as far as the horizon, straight and flat. The speedo says 70 miles an hour, and the miles are ticking over slowly, but it feels like you’re getting nowhere. Billboards line the interstates making sure you know every five minutes how many miles the next Burger King is. I knew America was a big place, but a week on the flat highways of the prairies gave me a real sense of distance. People out here drive four hours to get a Big Mac.

Mitchell, a dusty town in eastern South Dakota, is my first stop. Its claim to fame is the Corn Palace, a Russian looking monstrosity built from native corn and grasses to promote farming and to bring families to Mitchell. Tourists stand and look bewilderedly at the structure. I wonder how the idea for the palace was formed: ‘Hey, Earl, we need to get folks to come to Mitchell. Let’s build a palace outta corn.’ All that’s missing is a couple of guys sitting out front munching sticks of grass and brandishing old blunderbuss shotguns. Back in the car.

Small towns, petrol stations, billboards, dried fields, 400 miles, but it feels like 1000. Reaching the Black Hills is like arriving at the Garden of Eden: mountains, trees, rolling hills, bends in the road, green plants. Time to put the Lawnmower up on blocks and explore the region on foot. Excellent hiking, camping, and road touring abounds in the Black Hills National Forest, Custer State Park (where the buffalo roam), Wind Cave National Park, and the eerie Badlands. Mt. Rushmore is the centre piece of the region and the reason everyone comes here.

From photographs and the way it’s glorified in American culture, you’d think Rushmore was over 100 stories high. But it’s much smaller than you expect. Still impressive, though, but for some reason, I expected more. I had thought this momument could democratize even the most fervent dictator, but it disappoints. You stand on the viewing platform and squint, trying to work out who the guy with the moustache and glasses is. A better example of democracy is the car park, where you can pay US$10 to park at the foot of the momument, or park five minutes walk away for free.

Next stop was Crazy Horse. I’d heard a little about this monument, but nothing substantial or anything that sounded more than lore. Even before turning off the highway, I could see the monument as clear as day, still maybe three miles away. But it was just a face, a giant face, in profile, with a long, flat section that looked like nothing, and a horse’s head painted on the side of the mountain in white paint. It’s size is overwhelming; the story fascinating.

In 1939, prompted by the near completion of the Rushmore Memorial, Souix leader Chief Henry Standing Bear wrote to sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski who had won first prize for sculpture at the New York World Fair and had worked on the Rushmore monument. Standing Bear proclaimed that Indians ‘would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes too.’

Less than a decade later, Ziolkowski moved permanantly to the Black Hills to undertake a vastly more ambitious project than Rushmore. He had $174 and a vision.

The subject, Crazy Horse on horseback pointing at the lands where ‘his dead are buried,’ so appealed to Ziolkowski, he set out to make his monument the biggest statue in the world. He began alone with a chisel, a jackhammer, and a 700 step ladder, and didn’t stop until his death in 1982. His widow, most of their children, and even their children’s children, continue to realise his vision.

National and international interest has increased as the monument finally starts to take recognizable shape. It has recieved no federal or state funds because Ziolkowski claimed the government had no right to be involved after all the treaties it had broken with the Souix. Instead, the monument relies entirely on admissions and contributions.

To give some idea of its size, all four Rushmore heads could fit inside Crazy Horse’s head, from which will jut a 13 metre stone feather, while the visitor centre is a full mile from the carving itself. The beautiful 6 metre scale model at the visitor centre is 34 times smaller than the monument. It could well be another 50 years before it is finished.

But the plans don’t stop with the sculpture. Ziolkowski’s descendants hope to build a North American Indian Museum, a university, and a medical training centre on the land between the visitor centre and the monument. Construction is underway.

Back in the Lawnmower, driving south for Nebraska, I’m speechless, completely blown away. Ziolkowski had devoted his life to this project and died when it was still an undefined mess of rock. Now that’s dying for art.

Buffalo graze in paddocks along the highway until I enter Nebraska, a state home to a lot of flat land, a few thousand telephone poles, a couple of Springsteen and Dylan albums, an ironic state slogan (Nebraska: The Good Life), and one iconoclastic tourist drawcard: Carhenge. It is exactly as it sounds; old, wrecked cars painted grey and buried upright in a replica of Stonehenge. High art, or satanic shrine. It’s open to interpretation.

After its completion, the Nebraska Roads Department declared Carhenge a junkyard and ordered its removal. But the citizens of the nearby town of Alliance (population: 2 McDonalds, 1 Burger King, 9 petrol stations, and a dozen churches), realising they had the only tourist drawcard for miles, rallied around Carhenge and preserved its existence. No druids are going to descend on this momument, but it remains the best picnic spot in America’s heartland. And best of all, it’s free. No wannabe PT Barnum is charging two bits a gander or selling brain and nerve tonic from the back of a flat bed truck. For this reason, it stands alone as a roadside attraction.

The prairies have an identity all their own. It’s a very different America out here, as if nothing is known of the liberal west coast, or the uptight all business east coast, or the iced tea drinking southerners. But now I’ve seen the Crazy Horse Monument and Carhenge, I’m ready to go to the big Corn Palace in the sky.