USA Guide
The Great Plains
Crazy Horse Memorial
In 1939, prompted by the sight of the Rushmore monument, Sioux leader Henry Standing Bear wrote to Korczak Ziolkowski, who had just won first prize for sculpture at the New York World's Fair, telling him that Indians "would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too." The chief invited Ziolkowski to take on a similar project – and, less than a decade later, pushing forty and with just $174 to his name, the New Englander moved permanently to the Black Hills to undertake a vastly more ambitious mission than Rushmore – the Crazy Horse Memorial, on US-16, five miles north of Custer.
The subject, the revered warrior Crazy Horse on horseback, so appealed to Ziolkowski that he set out to make his monument the biggest statue in the world, higher even than the Great Pyramid. The work he began on Thunderhead Mountain in 1948 didn't stop with his death in 1982; his widow, children, and grandchildren continue to realize his vision. National and international interest has greatly increased as the monument finally starts to take recognizable shape; the 90ft-high face was completed in time for the fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 1998, although it will easily be another fifty years before the project is finished. The main viewing terrace at the visitor center is nearly a mile from the carving itself and the 20ft scale model on show there is 34 times smaller than the end result, which will be 563ft high and 641ft long.
Opening time: Open dawn to dusk year-round (and illuminated for an hour each night)
Price: $10, free to Native Americans