Crazy Horse Memorial
Korczak Ziolkowski began carving Crazy Horse into Thunderhead Mountain on June 3, 1948, at the invitation of Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear. The granite is part of the same Precambrian body as Black Elk Peak to the northeast, intruded about 1.7 billion years ago during the Trans-Hudson orogeny.
Ziolkowski took no salary and worked the mountain until he died in 1982; his wife, Ruth Ziolkowski, ran the project for the next thirty-two years and chose to finish the face first. It was dedicated June 3, 1998. Finished, the carving is planned at 563 feet high and 641 feet long; only the head and a roughed-out arm are clear of the rock so far, with completion estimated for 2037.
The mountain sits inside the Great Sioux Reservation established by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which the United States took without the required consent after the 1874 Custer expedition found gold. The Supreme Court called it a taking under the Fifth Amendment in 1980 and awarded compensation the Lakota have not accepted, because accepting it would end the claim. Not every Lakota supports the carving; descendants including Elaine Quiver have said the family was never asked and that the mountain is sacred, not a canvas.
The memorial is privately funded, not a National Park Service site. Parking is $15 a person; the visitor complex includes a museum, a restaurant, and a bus to the mountain’s base for an additional fee. You can pick up loose rock along the walkways to keep.