Crazy Horse Memorial

Henry Standing Bear wanted the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too. In 1948, Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski detonated the first blast on Thunderhead Mountain in the Black Hills — land the Lakota consider sacred — beginning a monument that has outlasted its founder and is now carried forward by his family. When finished, the carving of Oglala Lakota war leader Crazy Horse will stretch 641 feet long and 563 feet high, the largest mountain carving in the world. It accepts no government funding. That decision explains both the pace and the point.