Crazy Horse: The Mountain That Takes a Lifetime

Henry Standing Bear, an elder of the Lakota Sioux, sent a letter in nineteen thirty-nine to a sculptor named Korczak Ziolkowski, whose work he had admired. The letter said: 'My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes too.'

Ziolkowski came to the Black Hills in nineteen forty-eight and began carving Thunderhead Mountain, seventeen miles from Mount Rushmore, into the shape of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Lakota war leader who fought through the Great Sioux War and was killed in Army custody in September of eighteen seventy-seven. The design shows Crazy Horse on horseback, arm extended over his horse's mane, responding to the question a soldier once asked him: where are your lands now? His gesture means: my lands are where my dead lie buried.

Korczak Ziolkowski worked without federal funding, which the foundation has declined multiple times. He worked largely without pay in the early years. He died in October of nineteen eighty-two, having completed none of the figure.

His wife, Ruth, and their children continued. The face, nine stories tall, was completed and dedicated in nineteen ninety-eight. Fifty years of work to finish a face.

The arm, the horse's head, and the body remain to be carved. When complete, the finished sculpture will stand five hundred sixty-three feet tall and six hundred forty-one feet long, larger than any other sculpture on earth. The Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation reports that work continues today under the third generation of the Ziolkowski family.

There is no completion date. The foundation says it will be done when it is done. At the current pace, that is not a joke.