The Crazy Horse Memorial, carved into the Black Hills Mountains in South Dakota, is seven decades in the making. The world's largest mountain carving, the Crazy Horse Memorial is no stranger to record-setting numbers.
For instance, the pyramids in Egypt took about 20 years to make. And while the heads at Mount Rushmore National Memorial are a mere 60 feet high each, Crazy Horse's face is 87 ½ feet tall, and his horse – which is currently being worked on – is 219 feet high. The sculpture is 536 feet by 641 feet, and taller than a 60-story skyscraper.
And here's just another number: The Crazy Horse Memorial has well over 1 million visitors a year. Despite not being finished.
In 1939, Chief Henry Standing Bear invited noted New England sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to create a tribute to the North American Indians in the mountains after he saw his work, which included parts of Mouth Rushmore. For Chief Standing Bear, the Crazy Horse sculpture would be a way to “let the white man know the red man has great heroes, too.”
The mission of the Crazy Horse Memorial is to keep the cultures and traditions of the North American Indian alive and known, at a time when history has shown to repeatedly obliterate the stories of minorities.
And that was a mission that Korczak took seriously. He once said: “When the legends die, the dreams end. When the dreams end, there is no more greatness.”
He worked on the sculpture until his death in 1982, at 74 years old, 40 years of work. And during those 40 years, Korczak refused a salary.
“More of the South Dakota Black Hills wonderful landscape and scenery in Custer.” [Photo Credit: Jerry and Pat Donaho-CC]
It was a passion project for Korczak. And it soon became his family's entire world. According to the Crazy Horse Memorial's official website, Korczak began to wonder if he was working a bit too often on the memorial when his wife, Ruth, had gone into labor at the Crazy Horse Memorial. With no doctor able to get through the snow and to the memorial site in time, Korczak delivered his own child.
It's not surprising that his 10 children ended up just as fixated with Crazy Horse as he was.
That Crazy Horse would become their whole lives, too.
His sons ended up helping him up on the mountain after taking mountain carving classes at a one-room school house Korczak started at Crazy Horse (since he was probably almost never going to leave the memorial site). The girls helped Ruth expand the visitor complex.
And as adults, seven of the 10 children remained at the memorial site, determined to continue on their father's dream and vision.
“He left everything so we can carry on his work, and that's just what we're going to do,” said Ruth. “We're dedicated to that. His whole life would be wasted if the mountain carving […] was not completed.”
At one point, Korczak had told Ruth, “Never forget, [Crazy Horse Memorial] comes first, you come second.”
Without batting an eye, Ruth replied, “It's all right with me dear.”
And Korczak said his children knew they came third.
“Coming third in my world was first in most other kids' lives,” his daughter Monique had said after his death. “So the love that I got was more than most other kids got.”
Plus, she knew the importance of Crazy Horse Memorial. She knew it was more than just a carving. More than a memorial, even. It was her father's dream. His vision. It was his life.
“The head of Crazy Horse with construction equipment on site, for sculptors to work on completion.” [Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk-CC]
A little over 10 years after Korczak's death, the family completed the head of Crazy Horse. That was in 1998, “50 years to the day after Ziolkowski's first blast,” reads Black Hills & Badlands, a website dedicated to the historic site.
In an interview with NPR, Ruth stated, “Korczak said, 'Go slowly so you do it right.' And I, for one, would like to have it go faster, but there are so many things that you have to do in order to do it right that it takes time.”
Her feistiness and determination had definitely played a huge part in the immense expansion of the Crazy Horse Memorial site.
Ruth passed away in 2014, not only after completing Crazy Horse's head but adding the Indian Museum of North America at the memorial site, housing over 11,000 Native American artifacts from tribes across the United States.
“You can't just have the dream,” she had once said. “You've got to work for that dream. This is a team effort. It wouldn't be here if we didn't have a lot of great people.”
Korczak had once said that when legends die, the dreams end. But maybe he hadn't accounted for the legend's family. A family who would not only keep the dreams alive, but expand on them, improve them. Make them into something greater than the legend had even thought possible.
The Crazy Horse Memorial Welcome Center is open at 7 a.m., the Education Center at 9 a.m. Buses start taking groups to the base of the monument-in-progress at 8 a.m.