We had an absolutely amazing day! We drove just a few miles down the road to visit the Crazy Horse Memorial. I really expected this to take no more than a couple of hours, but we were there nearly all day! There is so much to see there!
The story of the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, was inspirational all by itself. He was born in 1908 in Boston of Polish descent and orphaned a year later. He grew up in foster homes and was completely self taught and never took a formal lesson in are, sculpture, architecture or engineering. After winning first prize at the 1939 World’s Fair, Korczak was invited by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear to the Black Hills to carve Crazy Horse.
Korczak arrived in the Black Hills on May 3, 1947 to accept the invitation and started work on Crazy Horse in 1948. A strong believer in the free enterprise system, he felt Crazy Horse should be built by the interested public and not the tax payer. Twice he turned down offers of federal funding. He also knew that the project was larger than any one person’s lifetime and left detailed plans to be used with his scale models to continue the project. Korczak died October 20, 1982. Since his death, his wife Ruth, and seven of their ten children continue working in concert with the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation.
The first thing we did was to take the bus trip out to the base of the construction site. This was very interesting and we had a pretty good view of the carving. On the way back to the complex the bus driver mentioned that for a donation of $125.00 each we could go up to the top and see the ‘face’ up close. Well, that sounded like a lot of money to us, but after much discussion, we decided to make the investment and take the trip to the top. Our guide, Tom, drove us up to the top via the construction road. From the back entrance, it didn’t seem that high up. Since it is Saturday, the construction crews weren’t working, but we were issued hard hats anyway. The last thing that Tom said as we started to walk out on the platform was to not look back until he said to. Of course, that is what we wanted to do, but we waited, then when we were about 40’ out, he said we could turn around.
The impact of seeing the face of Crazy Horse that close was priceless! We were all speechless. The detail in the face, you can’t see from the complex or even at the base of the mountain. Up close, you see the detail in the eyes, eyebrows and the lips, the expression on the face. Breathtaking!! The platform we walked out on is what will eventually be Crazy Horse’s arm, and they are supposed to start working on that this year. Who knows if the Crazy Horse Memorial will be finished in our lifetime, but I do believe that it will be finished, and when it is, it will be there for all time, for generations to come, in memory of our Native American Ancestors.
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| Korczak and his wife Ruth with the working, to scale, model of | Crazy Horse |
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