Crazy Horse Memorial

In 1948, Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski with his wife Ruth and their ten children relocated to a site near Custer City in the Black Hills of South Dakota to begin work on a mountain sculpture commemorating one of the great heroes of Native American History-Crazy Horse.   From the age of forty until his death in 1982, Korczak Ziolkowski devoted his life to this mountain sculpture.  Ruth continued his work until her death in spring of this year along with seven of their children.  A Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation to enable the work to continue was created over the intervening years and the work under the guidance of the Ziolkowski children continues.  Their work has enabled the completion of a Visitors Center, Museum and College at the site as well as the continuing work of carving the mountain statue.   The entire project has been completed to date without any Federal or State funds.  

Korczak had worked on the Mount Rushmore site prior to beginning this project and although he had no formal training or education, he had achieved acclaim for his works at the 1939 New York World’s Fair thus bringing him to the attention of Chief Standing Bear.  Accepting an offer to build the Memorial with only $174 dollars left to his name, he began his task.  Battling financial hardship, racial prejudice, injuries and advancing age he began a task to sculpt Crazy Horse upon his horse at a scale three times the size of Mount Rushmore.  Knowing the project was larger than his own life span, Korczak left detailed plans and scale models to continue the project.

It is impressive to see and the museum is phenomenal.