Rushmore is larger than the photographs suggest and smaller than the idea of it. You recognize the faces immediately and then spend a while reckoning with the scale and the strange fact of it — four presidents' faces carved into granite in the Black Hills. Crazy Horse, a few miles down the road, is completely different: still being carved after 75 years, enormous beyond comprehension, and telling a story that reframes everything you just saw at Rushmore.
Mount Rushmore was carved between 1927 and 1941 by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers. The faces are 60 feet tall. The Crazy Horse Memorial, begun in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski and continued by his family after his death, will depict the Lakota leader on horseback at a scale 10 times larger than Rushmore. After 75 years, the face is complete. The rest of the mountain is still being carved. Visiting both together creates one of the most complex and honest American experiences available anywhere.
Make this stop yours
Skip it, leave a note, or swap in something else. Saved to your shared plan.
Add your own stops
Found another place worth a visit around Mount Rushmore & Crazy Horse Memorial, SD? Add it and it joins your trip and maps.
The moment
Standing in front of Crazy Horse at the evening laser light show and looking up at the completed face — 87 feet tall — and then at the scale model showing what the finished sculpture will look like, and grasping that this family has spent 75 years on this work and may spend another 75 before it's finished.
The classic mistake
Skipping Crazy Horse because you've seen Rushmore. They are 17 miles apart and utterly different in meaning. Rushmore without Crazy Horse is half a conversation.
The photograph
Rushmore: from the Grand View Terrace along the Avenue of Flags — the flags frame the carving and add scale. Crazy Horse: from the viewing platform at the museum, the completed face fills the frame with the mountain below still raw.
Skip it if
You are severely pressed for time and have to choose: choose Crazy Horse. It's the less-known and more affecting of the two.
Don’t skip it if
You want to understand something true and complicated about America. Both of these places are necessary for that.
How long do you need?
1 hour: Rushmore alone. 2 hours: Rushmore + Crazy Horse. Half day: add the evening lighting ceremony at Rushmore (summer) and the laser show at Crazy Horse.
What to ask
At Crazy Horse, ask one of the Ziolkowski family members — they work the memorial — how much of the mountain has been removed so far. The answer (8 million tons) and the answer to what percentage of the sculpture is complete (less than 10%) are both staggering.
🍂 This season · Fall / Winter
Both are open year-round. The sculptures in snow are dramatic and visitors are almost nonexistent.
Entry fee
Rushmore: free. Crazy Horse: ~$15/person.
Gas
Keystone and Hill City nearby.
Don't miss eating
Huckleberry ice cream and fresh-baked goods at the Mount Rushmore Lodge bakery or any shop in Keystone — the Black Hills huckleberry is the same variety as Glacier's and equally extraordinary. Sylvan Lake Lodge inside Custer State Park does an excellent vegetarian menu in a stunning setting.
Websitenps.gov/moru and crazyhorsememorial.org
Average weather, all twelve months
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | 35° | 40° | 48° | 59° | 69° | 79° | 87° | 85° | 75° | 62° | 47° | 37° |
| Low | 11° | 16° | 24° | 34° | 44° | 53° | 59° | 57° | 47° | 35° | 23° | 13° |
| Rain/Snow | 0.5" | 0.6" | 1.0" | 1.7" | 2.6" | 2.9" | 1.9" | 1.5" | 1.3" | 1.0" | 0.6" | 0.5" |