Inside the controversial 70-year journey to build Crazy Horse, the world's largest monument that still isn't finished

In South Dakota's Black Hills region, 5,000 square miles of mountains and Penderosa pines, is the unfinished outline of the world's largest statue.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Over the last 70 years the granite mountain, once called Thunderhead Mountain, has been shaped by dynamite and bulldozers. It's slowly taken shape, but it's far from finished.

Source: CNN

The memorial is based on eye-witness accounts of a Native American called Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse is famous for being one of the leaders in a victory against the US army in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. He's also known for his humility, and some people have questioned whether he would have liked having a replica the size of a mountain.

There aren't any photos of Crazy Horse, so the sculpture is a symbolic portrait.

Source: The New Yorker

When it's done, a long-haired granite warrior, sitting astride a horse, will point Southeast. There lies a plot of land where many Native Americans are buried. It'll be 563 feet high and 641 feet long.

Sources: Reuters, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times

Just 17 miles away are the presidential profiles of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln carved into Mt. Rushmore.

The idea for the memorial was in response to the tribute to white American leaders. The Crazy Horse carving will dwarf them when it is done.

If the president's heads were all stacked on top of each other, by comparison, they'd reach just over halfway on Crazy Horse.

In 1939, Korcaz Ziolkowski, a Polish-American sculptor who had worked on Mt. Rushmore, was contacted by Chief Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota local elder.

Standing Bear wrote to Ziolkowski after a sculpture he'd made won first prize at the New York World Fair in 1939. Standing Bear said there needed to be a Native American memorial in response to Mt Rushmore.

"My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes also," he said.

Ziolkowski wasn't his first choice, he'd contacted Gutzon Borglum, who carved Mt Rushmore in 1931, but he never heard back. Ziolkowski's own time working on the Mt. Rushmore sculpture was short-lived. He stepped away from the project after clashing with the sculptor's son.

When Ziolkowski started work in 1948, he had less than $200. He also had to deal with no roads, water, or electricity.

To climb the mountain, he had to use a treacherous 741-step wooden staircase. Despite having little money, he refused to accept funding from the federal government because of disagreements stemming from how it handled the funding for Mt. Rushmore.

Ziolkowski was consumed by the project, and his first wife divorced him because of it.

But in 1950, he married Ruth Ross, who had come to South Dakota two years earlier to volunteer on the project.

The wedding was on Thanksgiving, so he didn't need to take an extra day off from sculpting the mountain.

They had a large family — 10 children, seven of whom went onto work on the enormous project. Ziolkowski was always honest about his focus on the sculpture. He told his wife she would always come second to it, and his children would come third. He also said that if his children left, they shouldn't bother to come back.

According to Ross, Ziolkowski felt like the US army had done a "terrible wrong" to the Native Americans and wanted to right that as best he could.

Source: Reuters

He worked alone for years to sculpt the mountain. In comparison, Mt. Rushmore had 400 workers, and $1 million of funding.

The Mt. Rushmore monument took a quick 14 years to build in comparison, though it's only on one side of Mt. Rushmore while Ziolkowski wanted to carve up the entire mountain.

For extra income, he set up a dairy farm and a sawmill as he continued to carve the gigantic sculptire. The work came at a physical cost. He had four spinal operations, a heart bypass, and many broken bones.

In a 1977 interview, he acknowledged his ego.

After nearly thirty years of work, Ziolkowski told "60 Minutes" that while he knew he was egotistical, he also believed he could pull it off.

Five years later, in 1982, Ziolkowski died without completing his project. His last wish was that his family carry on the mission.

He was buried at the base of the sculpture. Ross and his children took over construction of the rest.

Ruth became chief executive of the memorial and told NPR that nothing was impossible as long as you were willing to work hard and pay the price.

Source: NPR

In 1998, 50 years after beginning work on the memorial, Crazy Horse's head was unveiled. It is 87 feet high and 58 feet wide, with eyes that are 17 feet apart.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, CBS News, Los Angeles Times

The sculpture has been used to celebrate special events like the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Since 2005, there have been laser shows against the mountain, and visitors can also watch dynamite explosions.

Sources: The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times

After the unveiling of the face, work has steadily continued, but there aren't many people actually working on the mountain. As of 2007, there were four drilling and blasting workers and one foreman.

Source: Los Angeles Times

The process has moved slowly for several reasons. Every year, in the summer, visitors and electrical storms slow things down. Most of the sculpting gets done in fall and winter.

But in the winter blizzards slow work, too. And the mountain's high iron content, which makes the rock hard, has delayed work.

Funding has also been an ongoing issue. While the family won't accept money from the federal government, which has offered twice, it gets donations and admission fees from the millions of tourists that have visited.

Tourists have been visiting the monument for years. And now there's more on offer to tourists than just the family house — there's a 40,000 square foot visitor center with a museum, restaurant, and gift shop. There are also plans to build a university and medical center.

Tourists are charged $30 per car to enter the memorial area. And for $125 they can go to the top and explore what will one day be Crazy Horse's outstretched arm.

In 2018, the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation brought in $12.5 million in admission and donations.

There's also been some discomfort around a non-Native American family profiting from a history that isn't theirs.

Jim Bradford, a Native American former state senator, told the New Yorker that the project first felt like a dedication to his people, but now seems more like a business.

"All of a sudden, one non-Indian family has become millionaires off our people," he said.

At one point, a video shown at the monument's tourist center claimed that Ziolkowski was born the day Crazy Horse died, in an attempt to strengthen the link between them. It also said that Native Americans believed Crazy Horse's spirit was roaming until it found Ziolkowski, who became his host.

But the dates were disputed, and the tourist center no longer includes those details in the video.

It now focuses more heavily on Henry Standing Bear. But the film doesn't include anything about a letter Standing Bear sent to Ziolkowski, which said that the project should be entirely under his own direction.

Even though Chief Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota chief, first came up with the idea for the monument, some Native Americans don't think it's a good thing.

The difference between the Crazy Horse project now and how it was originally envisioned has caused friction within the Native American community.

Tim Giago, founder of Native Sun News, said he had never heard of a single Native American say they were proud of the mountain...

Source: CNN

...While in 2001, activist Russel Means said the carving was an insult to Native Americans and that it was comparable to someone going to Israel and carving up Mount Zion...

Source: Reuters

...But Seth Big Crow, who is related to Crazy Horse, said that the monument could be America's answer to the Easter Island statues.

"Maybe 300 or 400 years from now, everything will be gone, we'll all be gone, and they'll be the four faces in the Black Hills and the statue there symbolizing the Native Americans who were here at one time," he told Voice of America.

In 2018, Terry DeRouchy, who works at the memorial's visitor services, said that Crazy Horse's hand, arm, shoulder, hairline, and the top of the horse's head should be done within the next 15 years.

Source: The Telegraph

Yet there's no deadline for finishing the whole memorial, and Ziolkowski's advice to his wife Ruth, "Go slowly, so you do it right," is still relevant.

Source: NPR

When it is finally finished, the memorial will be just under four times the height of the Statue of Liberty, and far bigger than any individual.

Source: The New Yorker