A sign on the highway in the Black Hills advertising Mt. Rushmore reads: "His legacy will enrich your patriotism" and it has a cartoonish drawing of the faces of Mt. Rushmore.
If we designed a sign for the Crazy Horse Memorial, it would be placed right next to this Mt. Rushmore sign, and read: "And the Crazy Horse Memorial will diminish it."
Korczak Ziolkowski worked with Borglum to carve Mt. Rushmore. The Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear heard of Korczak's award-winning sculptures and requested that Korczak create a monument for all North American Indians and "so the White Man would know the Red Man has great heroes also."
The Lakota elders chose Crazy Horse and Korczak made a 1/34th scale model of the Crazy Horse Memorial. Below, a cat takes a nap amongst the bustling tourists.
When complete, it will be larger than any monument in the world - including the Washington Monument. What a statement!
Some carving facts:
- 641 feet long and 563 feet high
- Crazy Horse's eyes & lids: 17 feet, 9 inches wide; 8 feet, 8 inches high
- Crazy Horse's out-stretched arm: 263 feet long
- Horse's head: 219 feet high (almost 22 stories!)
- Horse's eyes: 16 feet wide, 13 feet high
Visitors can have a piece of rock the the Crazy Horse mountain (donation suggested), so we picked one up for Mrs. Linda's garden rock collection.The following poem, written by Korczak Ziolkowski, will be carved in 3-foot letters next to Crazy Horse:
When the course of history has been told
Let these truths here carved be known:
Conscience dictates civilizations live
And duty ours to place before the world,
A chronicle which will long endure.
For like all things under us and beyond
Inevitably we must pass into oblivion.
This land of refuge to the stranger
Was ours for countless eons before:
Civilizations majestic and mighty.
Our gifts were many which we shared
And gratitude for them was known.
But later given my oppressed ones
Were murder, rape and sanguine war.
Looking from whence invaders came,
Greedy usurpers of our heritage.
For us the past is in our hearts,
The future never to be fulfilled.
To you I give this granite epic
For your descendents to always know -
My lands are where my dead lie buried.
June 3, 1948 - the first blast, which removed about 10 tons of rock and Korczak began work on the mountain.
1950 - Korczak marries Ruth. Together, they had 10 children; 7 of which continue work on the memorial.
1982 - Korczak dies suddenly. He tells his wife, "You must work on the mountain-but go slowly so you do it right."
1987 - Ruth convinces the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation to postpone work on the horse and to work on carving Crazy Horse's face.
June 3, 1998 - Crazy Horse's face is completed and dedicated on the 50th anniversary of the first dedication of the Crazy Horse Memorial.
It is interesting to see the progress of the monument. Check out the pictoral history of carving the face here.
The white line on the mountain is the outline of the horse's head.
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