Crazy Horse Remains A Work In Progress

By Author: Steve Robinson
Total Articles: 467
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Cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and vacation packages make visiting America’s mid section affordable. A sight well worth seeing is the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

This memorial plays tribute to the Native American war hero that is many times the size of nearby Mount Rushmore and is the world’s largest mountain carving.

The Crazy Horse carving commenced 64 years ago and is far from finished. There appears to be no rush to finish given that there is no deadline. Harsh weather including lightning storms and blizzards as well as the mountain’s high iron content, which makes the rock harder to carve, have all slowed the sculpting progress.

When finished the sculpture will stand 563 feet tall, which will be a few feet higher than the Washington Monument.

Another factor delaying the completion of Crazy Horse is funding which is limited to admission fees and donations. The nonprofit project has turned down repeated offers of public financing because the original Polish sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, did not believe that the government would complete the ...
... carving.

Ziolkowski passed away in 1982 and viewed the American government as flaky when it came to following through on its agreements. He was dismayed by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty which gave the Black Hills to the Lakota but required their children to be given an “English education” and did not address gold rights, which led to years of conflict.

Admission fees totaled almost four million dollars in 2010, with another $19 million coming in donations over the past five years.

Crazy Horse’s 87 foot head was completed, after 50 years of work, in 1998. Work is currently ongoing to finish the 219 foot tall head of Crazy Horse’s steed.

Mount Rushmore was completed after only 14 years with government financial assistance.
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