Crazy Horse Memorial

During the 1930s, Native Americans in the upper midwest watched as the faces of four American presidents were carved on the summit of a mountain in South Dakota. Mount Rushmore sits in the middle of the Black Hills, a mountain range long held sacred by the Ogalala Lakota and other native tribes of the area. In 1946, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear asked noted sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to create a mountain sculpture of Crazy Horse, a hero to the Lakota people, noting in a letter to the sculptor that "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too."

Ziolkowski, a man of tremendous tenacity as well as artistic skill, took on the challenge. He began working alone in 1948, slowly blasting away at the rocky outcropping on Thunderhead Mountain in the Black Hills just north of Custer, South Dakota. The rest of his life was devoted to carving the mountain.

Although Ziolkowski died in 1982, work continues to this day, overseen by his widow and seven of their ten children. The ongoing project has been self-supporting from the beginning, paid for by admission fees and private contributions. No government funding has ever been accepted.

Tracey, Eric and I had visited Crazy Horse in 1994. Since that time, carvers have finished the face of the sculpture and I wanted to return to check out the progress. It's pretty impressive to make the turn from the highway onto the road leading to the mountain more than a mile away.


On one day each year, visitors are allowed to walk up the mountain onto Crazy Horse's "arm." Although I wasn't there on that day, I took a bus ride to the base of Thunderhead Mountain and was able to see the huge sculpture relatively "up close."


The "crown" on Crazy Horse's head is scaffolding that holds plumbs and other equipment that guide the blasting and carving.

When complete, the mountain will match the model shown in the foreground below. Crazy Horse is depicted pointing into the distance, a reference to a quote attributed to him: "My lands are where my dead lie buried."


The finished Crazy Horse Memorial will be 641 feet long and rise to 563 feet in height, making it the world's largest sculpture. Korszak's vision for the completed memorial includes a university and medical training center for the North American Indian and the Indian Museum of North America.

The project will take unknown years to complete, but the Ziolkowski family has no deadline. In an interview, Ruth Ziolkowski, Korszak's widow, said "Doesn't matter when it's finished. What matters is the work never stops and you stick with it until it's done."

Just as impressive as the vision of the Crazy Horse Memorial is the amazing and enduring commitment of this family to complete the Herculean task. They are already sixty-two years into the effort and show no signs of ever giving up. They are literally moving a mountain.

You can learn more about the Crazy Horse Memorial here.