Summertime road trips of 700-some miles into South Dakota, the Badlands and the Black Hills seem like a rite of passage. This is the most classic of vacations, especially for families, who follow typically flat and easy-to-drive I-90 for a glimpse of the Wild West. They encounter Shady Brady hats and jackalopes at Wall Drug Store en route, then Black Hills Gold and red clay pottery, workingcow boys and roaming buffalo.

This is timeless Americana, right? Wholesome, tame—but not entirely predictable. Getting misty-eyed at the sight of Mount Rushmore and feeling awestruck while watching work on the Crazy Horse Memorial never occurred to me. But that is what happened. Who devotes part or all of a lifetime to outlandish dreams that slowly turn into everlasting legacies? In South Dakota, the dwindling group includes Donald “Nick” Clifford, one of the last guys alive who helped carve Mount Rushmore.

He turns 87 on July 5 and began climbing the mountain for pay at age 17, during the Great Depression. “Back in those days, we were glad to have a job,” Clifford says, and he didn’t care whether neighbors classified the mission as foolhardy.

Clifford—who grew up 4 curvy, uphill miles from his work-site—spent time in quartz mines before helping to drill, winch and sandblast a quartet of presidential faces into a granite mountaintop. This was his job for three years, until Mount Rushmore’s dedication. About 400 men in 14 years made this project their occupation.

Dynamite blasts went off at noon and 4 p.m. daily. Clifford and his high school buddies got a half-hour off for lunch, started work at 7:30 a.m. and had a few on-the-job safety scares, but nothing that killed anybody. “It makes me proud to be an American, to have worked on something like this,” says Clifford, whose station tended to be to the right of Lincoln’s face.

He also played baseball “every day, rain or shine,” as a part of the Mount Rushmore team, which won consecutive state championships. Clifford was a pitcher and outfielder; for sale at the monument’s gift shop are his autographed baseballs and books.

Now the rubble exceeds 8 million tons. The face of the revered Indian warrior was unveiled in 1998; although he was a Lakota, this sculpture pays tribute to all tribes. The work began because of Korczak Ziolkowski, the monument’s designer and—at the beginning—sole laborer. The sculptor began this monstrous project at midlife, at the request of a Lakota chief, and died in 1982.

The work continues because of tour proceeds, private donations and the enthusiasm of the sculptor’s widow, Ruth, who still lives in the mountainside log home that her husband built in the 1940s. No government money is involved. “If you love your job, it doesn’t seem like work,” the 81-year-old woman insists. “You are happy and grateful to begin each new day.”

Seven of the couple’s 10 children also stay involved with the mission, which Ruth considers “storytelling in stone.” The Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore memorials serve as stellar symbols of independence, character, freedom and hope— and not just on the Fourth of July.

Making room for others to roam defines freedom in a different way. Ranch tours and volunteer work shifts at the sanctuary are possible. Foal adoptions, horse sponsorships and other donations are welcome.

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Crazy Horse | Photo by Mary Bergin