Mount Rushmore

Held in 1927, President Calvin Coolidge presided over the ceremony to officially commence the carving of Mount Rushmore. 

Figure 4 Before there were faces on Mount Rushmore, there was unshaped rock. About 90 percent of the mountain was carved with dynamite. 

Alfred Nobel s invention has benefited humankind in countless ways. The Panama Canal, Mount Rushmore, and many tunnels and mines were built with the aid of dynamite. It can break up dangerous ice and logjams and it can quickly and safely reduce large buildings to rubble. Police departments use dynamite to detonate suspicious packages. Fire departments use it to put out oil well fires. The explosion of the dynamite requires a huge amount of oxygen and suffocates the fire. 

The word on South Dakota is that there s the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore on one side, Sioux Falls on the other and a whole lot of empty space in between. The culinary scene certainly follows suit. You can pull off some good meals on both sides of the state. On the west side of the state, you ll find vegetarian dishes in Dead-wood, Spearfish and Rapid City, while the east side you ll find options in Sioux Falls. 

One of South Dakota s largest towns and the starting point of the route to Mount Rushmore, Rapid City has its share of character. The wasteland called the Black Hills has something to do with this, but it s mostly the Harley Davidson riders that give Rapid City its color. 

Intuitively, humans identify objects such as the carved faces at Mount Rushmore as qualitatively different from that of a random mountainside. However, quantifying this... 

Figure 7.1 The faces of Mount Rushmore—Public Domain...

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