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Crazy Horse Memorial Information

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain sculpture under construction in the town of Crazy Horse, South Dakota. The work depicts the late 19th century Lakota Indian tribal leader Crazy Horse, who spent much of his life attempting to preserve his tribe's way of life from intrusion and persecution from the U.S. Government.The sculpture is being built to honor the history of Native American Indians and is the largest mountain carving in the world. Due to the enormity of the project, no estimated date of completion has been determined as of May 2010.

  1. Origin

    • The Crazy Horse Memorial was the conception of the Boston, Massachusetts-born sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski. Notorious for his work on the famous mountain sculpture of four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore, Ziolkowski was approached via letter in 1939 by Lakota Indian Chief Henry Standing Bear about undertaking a project to commemorate the Native American Indian. Work on the project commenced in May 1947.

    Land

    • The mountain on which the sculpture is being constructed was an amalgamated purchase of mining and homestead claims by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, the nonprofit corporation which operates the project. The sculpture plans dictate that the work will be 563 feet high and 641 feet long. To prepare for initial blasts on the mountain in 1948, Ziolkowski drilled the first holes by hand.

    Funding

    • The Crazy Horse project is a non-profit enterprise funded completely by private charitable donations. Ziolkowsk refused government contribution from the project's inception, stressing not only public initiative but found such gifts inappropriate given the great adversarial relationship between the U.S. Government and Native American Indians throughout history. In December of 2008, South Dakota banker T. Denny Sanford donated $5 million to the project and its foundation, the largest gift to date.

    Current Complex

    • Today the site is home to an expansive Welcome Center, a small museum showcasing Native American art and artifacts, as well as a Native American Educational & Cultural Center. The facility is also home to the Crazy Horse Orientation and Communications Center, complete with a theater-style conference facility and restaurant which offers sprawling views of the mountain sculpture. The facility has more than 1 million visitors annually.

    Future

    • Ziolkowski's 200-plus-page master plan for Crazy Horse mountain dictated future plans to make the site a beacon of education and humanitarianism. The plan outlines the construction of an expanded Indian Museum of North America to document the legacy of America's tribes, in addition to the founding of an American Indian University and Medical Training Center. Ziolkowski also documented plans for a recreational facility and visitor complex.

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Sculpture

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