Crazy Horse

On Monday, we went to the Crazy Horse Monument. The monument has been under construction since 1948. The sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, had worked with Gutzon Borglum at Mount Rushmore for a short time. When Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear asked Korczak to carve the monument of Crazy Horse, Korczak agreed and dedicated the rest of his life to the project. He and his wife, Ruth, lived on the monument grounds their entire married lives. They had ten children, seven of whom still work on the monument. They erected a one-room school on the property and hired a teacher to teach their ten children. 

The monument has been built entirely from private funds. Korczak twice turned down millions of government dollars because he did not think the project would get finished if it became a government project. It is possible that he thought this way since he saw the Mount Rushmore project stop when the government money ran out.

When Korczak died in 1982, his wife took over running the project. Today, at age 82, she is still running the project.

Methods have changed greatly over the 60 years of the project. When Korczak began the job, he worked alone, he worked by hand, and he daily climbed hundreds of steps to the top of the monument. Today, the workers drive trucks to the top of the monument on roads they have constructed. A GPS system monitors the dynamite blows that remove unneeded parts of the mountain in small steps. Also, the project includes a large museum and gift shop as well as a movie theater and sculptor's studio. Mrs. Z still lives on the property. At night, a fabulous laser light show shines on the monument and tells the history of the project and shows an image of how the project will look when it is all finished.