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Mt.
Rushmore
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A
60-foot long face sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? Now imagine
four of them...carved out of rock, looking majestically across
South Dakota's vast forests. And once you look up 500 feet and
realize the faces are those of famous presidents at Mount Rushmore,
it's not so scary, but rather patriotic. Construction on this
colossal art project (known as the Shrine of Democracy) began
in 1927 and took 14 years to complete. Costing a mere $1 million,
it's now deemed priceless to the scores of visitors who gaze
up at the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore
Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
In
South Dakota, you can also explore the Badlands Wilderness
Area, which covers 64,000 acres and is the site of the
reintroduction of the black-footed ferret, the most
endangered land mammal in North America. Badlands
National Park also contains the world's richest Oligocene
epoch fossil beds, dating 23 to 35 million years old.
Another national beauty that shouldn't be missed is
the Black Hills National Forest, a sea of pine trees
so dense they appear black from a distance.
If
you're seeking a unique meeting place in South Dakota, look
no further than Mitchell. There you will find the World's Only
Corn Palace, an exhibition hall topped with onion-shaped towers
and annually covered with 600,000 ears of corn and 3,000 bushels
of grains and grasses to form a wildly popular international
tourist destination.
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