Crazy Horse Rides Again

As a followup to yesterday's entry, the Bavarian Inn provided adquate Bavarian food BUT the mashed potatoes were again coated in a glossy brown substance. Still, we enjoyed ourselves and appreciated waking up among the Black Hills Ponderosa pines. Our day today consisted of a visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial, the endeavor of a lone sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, a Polish-born orphan who was raised by an Irish prizefighter in Boston until he left at age 16 to seek his fortune. Already a sculptor on the Mount Rushmore project, he received a letter from Henry Standing Bear, a Lokota Sioux Indian chief, asking him to create an equally powerful memorial that would remind the world that "the Red Man has great heroes, too."

Korczak Ziolkowski died before the work was finished, but it continues, with seven of his ten children and his widow continuing work on the project. The most fascinating thing about this project, besides its enormity, which I will address in a moment, is that fact that although Korczak Ziolkowski did not have the money to move with any great speed on the project, he has refused up to ten million dollars in government money to complete it. It is entirely privately funded because, according to a documentary film shown in the visitor's center, he didn't believe that the government would finish the project.

Today, after fifty eight years, the head of Crazy Horse is finally carved out. The sculpture is the largest in the world. The head is 88 feet high. The entire sculpture is as long as a cruise ship and taller than a sixty-story skyscraper. There's a fabulous visitor's center and an Indian cultural center. All proceeds from admissions and sales go toward the monument.


Leaving the monument, we take a winding trail through Deadwood, now a gambling mecca, and Lead, and lunch in Spearfish, one of the prettiest towns in South Dakota. The city park has an ampitheatre and a small trout stream running through it. Even in hundred-degree weather, it's cool in the shade, and we eat our sandwiches, offer Ethan water, and set off across the plains for the long drive to Sheridan, Wyoming. Tomorrow: Little Big Horn National Memorial.