“He soon found another location just a few miles away that he thought would be perfect. A giant wall of solid granite big enough from multiple carved portraits, each of the six stories tall. There was, he declared, no piece of granite comparable to it in the United States. 

He also thought that a national tribute to U.S. presidents would be more appealing than heroes of the West. I want to create a monument so inspiring that people from all over America will be drawn to come and look, and go home better citizens, he said.”

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Hi everybody, welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. In that introduction you heard a recording from the Youtube channel titled The Smithsonian Channel: Mount Rushmore was supposed to look very different. I’ll add the link to the transcript. As you heard in that video, Mount Rushmore was intended to be an inspiring monument. You also heard that it’s a carved sculpture made in rock. That rock monument, as he said, measures six stories tall. When I say that something is six stories tall, it means that it is the height of a building with six floors. That’s one massive monument, right? 

So in today’s lesson we’ll talk about Mount Rushmore, but I would also like to talk briefly about the Crazy Horse Memorial, which doesn’t commemorate American presidents, but actually the leader of a Native American tribe, called Crazy Horse. 

The two monuments are just 15 miles away from each other and they give a small insight into an ongoing issue that the United States government has with Native Americans…