The Land of Great Faces & Great Places

You have just entered South Dakota! Welcome!

Hold on Mom! It was windy!

Our first stop- Mount Rushmore, of course!

Front: Uncle Delbert, Mom, Aunt Kay, Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Richard

Back: Uncle George, Uncle Tommy, Uncle Teddy & Uncle Abe

More than three million visitors come to Mount Rushmore every year. The project work was done between October 4, 1927 until October 31, 1941. Close to 400 men and women worked on the memorial and they climbed 700 stairs each day to get to work... talk about a workout!

National Parks Service works hard everyday to keep the monument in shape for many years to come. If you want to read more about Mount Rushmore visit www.nps.gov/moru. There are kinds of really cool facts there like how tall the heads are and how wide the eyes are and so, so much more. Go! Learn!


People from South Dakota must really love carving mountains because they have another site. Crazy Horse Memorial. It says that it is the largest mountain carving in progress. And the project began in 1948. More cool stuff at their site!

North and South Dakota were one territory until 1889. What caused the split? Both Dakota's are named after the Dakota, Sioux tribe. The word Dakota means friends or allies. 90 percent of the state is prairie, grassland, and farmland. From the tourism info site, it looks like it's going to take a camper and adventure styled person to vacation here. It doesn't really feature any urban areas but I'm sure they're there. Somewhere. Help me out here!

South Dakota is now known as the Mount Rushmore State but it's only been official since 1992. Before that, they were known as the Sunshine State! Can you believe that? We'll talk about who reins as the Sunshine State later... if you would like to know more about visiting South Dakota check out http://www.travelsd.com/ and they can help plan your next vacation.

Fun facts about South Dakota are:

The state flower is the pasque.

The state tree is the black hills spruce.

The state gemstone is the fairburn agate.

All South Dakotian's report to the Rushmore Deck on Friday, June 6th and tell us what makes South Dakota the Taste of USA!