Nothing prepared me. Even though I have seen discovery channel specials about this project, I never caught the magic. I didn’t have a sense of the power or the size of this venture.
A few years after the completion of Mount Rushmore, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear announced that he and the other American Indian chiefs “would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes too.” They approached Korczak Ziolowski, a Czech sculptor, and convinced him to dedicate the rest of his life to the creation of an IMMENSE likeness of the Native American hero Crazy Horse.
(They have a loooooooooong way to go!)Here’s what IMMENSE is – when finished, the sculpture will be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high. The head alone is 87 feet high. For comparison, the heads on Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet high.
In 1946, the site was chosen and in 1949 Ziolowski started blasting away at the mountain. After he died, his body totally used up at the age of 74, his wife Ruth and seven of their ten kids continued the mission of getting the statue finished. It was Ruth who made the decision to finish sculpting the face of Crazy Horse before finishing the roughing out of the entire sculpture. It was a great decision. Seeing the face brings humanity to the site and gives life to the dream.
Terry spotted a pile of rocks in the gift shop. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be actual rocks blasted from the mountain during the daily dynamite-carving of the monument. The price was 2 bucks a rock--a real deal! We bought one. Turns out it weighs a ton, and so did my suitcase when we flew home from Iowa. But the rock lives in Nevada now, a state with rocks coming out its ears, but it's the only rock from the cast-off trimmings of the Crazy Horse Monument in South Dakota. --Tom
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