Is the Crazy Horse Memorial Worth Visiting?

South Dakota is known as the Mount Rushmore State. It’s also our state of domicile. As such, we made a point to visit its eponymous monument to the birth, growth, development, and preservation of our country while boondocking near the Badlands. 

The 60-foot-tall granite faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln took 14 years to complete. Today, those faces greet more than 2 million visitors annually on a mountain that stands 5,725 feet high in the Black Hills, a 5 million-acre forest plagued by controversy. 

Only 16 miles away is another, much larger granite monument we didn’t know about at the time we visited Mount Rushmore. This one, of Crazy Horse, is a tribute to Native Americans. Like us, you may have heard of Mount Rushmore and wonder if the Crazy Horse Memorial is worth visiting. Read on to decide for yourself.

Envisioning Another Monument

The entire Black Hills area was sacred to numerous Native American tribes and was granted to the Sioux and Arapaho tribes through a treaty in 1868. When Colonel George Custer and his expedition team found gold in the area in 1874, the Americans wanted the land for themselves. This led to the Battle of Little Bighorn, which ended with the tribes losing their rights to the land. 

Before the completion of Mount Rushmore, Lakota Sioux Chief Henry Standing Bear commissioned New England sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who assisted sculptor Gutzon Borglum on Mount Rushmore, to carve another sculpture in the area to honor Native Americans. “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too,” Chief Standing Bear wrote. 

Ziolkowski met the chief in 1940. After serving a call of duty in WWII, Ziolkowski agreed to take on the project to create a 100-foot sculpture of Crazy Horse, the Lakota war leader who fought the U.S. government to preserve Native American land and the Lakotan way of life. 

In 1946, Ziolkowski sculpted a scale model of Crazy Horse. A year later, he moved to the Black Hills to begin working on the full-scale project. Upon arrival, Ziolkowski decided to enlarge the sculpture to 563 feet, even though he knew he could never finish it in his lifetime. 

While five of the nine survivors of the Battle of Little Bighorn looked on in 1948, Ziolkowski made the first blast on the mountain, seven years after the completion of Mount Rushmore. Forgoing a salary and rejecting funding from the federal government, he pledged that the project would be nonprofit and educational. 

Exploring Crazy Horse

Seventy-six years later, donation-funded work continues on the Crazy Horse Memorial, which became quite a sight to behold on its 50th anniversary in 1998. At that time, during a dedication ceremony, Ziolkowski’s widow, Ruth, unveiled the complete face of Crazy Horse.

Although the sculpture is visible northbound on US Highway 385, more than 1 million visitors pay $30 to $35 per carload to navigate the winding road to the Crazy Horse Welcome Center. There, they pay their respects and glimpse the world’s largest mountain carving.

From the parking lot, they’re greeted with a side view of Crazy Horse’s face, outstretched arm, and pointer finger. A round window in the granite marks the beginning separation between Crazy Horse and his horse. 

True to sculptor Ziolkowski’s commitment, the memorial grounds include museums, a university, and a conference center. In the welcome center, guests find an informative film, a gift shop, and a restaurant. 

From the welcome center, visitors can hop on a bus to the base of the mountain for $5 per person — weather permitting (if there’s lightning in the area, tours stop) — to get a better perspective of the size of the mammoth monument. For an extra $125 per person, a van provides a guided tour to the top of the mountain. 

Even without taking a tour to get closer, the sculpture is truly a sight to behold and worth the visit. We’re glad we got to see it. 

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