Barb Gonzalez / For The BulletinBighorn rams face off on a bluff in the Cedar Pass section of Badlands National Park. Visitors to the park may keep their eyes open for ancient fossils as they hike several short trails that extend into the bleak wilderness from the Ben Reifel Visitor Center.

RAPID CITY, S.D. — There can be few Americans who do not know of Mount Rushmore, the massive mountaintop monument to four U.S. presidents in the heart of South Dakota’s Black Hills.

But how many also are familiar with the Crazy Horse Memorial? This incredible tribute to a 19th-century chief of the Lakota Sioux tribe, in the works for more than 65 years, will be the largest sculpture on earth when it is completed, several decades in the future. And it’s a mere 8 miles — as the eagle flies — from Rushmore.

Seeing the slow progress on Crazy Horse, a project that was launched in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski (1908-82), and which has been continued after his death by his widow and seven children, was a highlight of my recent visit to the Black Hills region. And that’s saying a lot, because there is so much more to see and do here.

Within close proximity are five sites administered by the National Park Service — Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Wind Cave and Badlands national parks, Devils Tower and Wind Cave national monuments. Those alone could account for a full vacation, but they represent only a few of the area attractions.

The regional center of Rapid City, an almost-Bend-sized community, has statues of every American president standing on 12 downtown street corners, in keeping with the Mount Rushmore theme. Within a short drive are wildlife-rich Custer State Park, the Wild West gambling town of Deadwood, the motorcycle-riding hub of Sturgis, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (where the notorious Wounded Knee Massacre took place), and all manner of lures for family holidays, from Reptile Gardens to the Flintstones’ Bedrock City theme park.

In a three-day visit, I had to pick and choose what to see and do. But nothing captured my imagination more than the freakishly large Crazy Horse monument. When finished, it will occupy the entire side of a mountain that rises hundreds of feet above the surrounding plains.