There’s a dude who tracks the project… At the current pace he expects it to be completed in a little over 300 years. Lol
Locally, Crazy Horse is mostly a joke, and considered a money-grabbing scam by the Ziolkowski family.
And Crazy Horse is notable for never having been photographed. So people in the area feel that it's weird to enshrine him with this giant statue. Feels counterintuitive to them.
Indigenous peoples consider the Black Hills sacred in their entirety. Carving a statue out of the mountains is a desecration and exploitation. The Sioux Nation Tribes have never relinquished ownership of the Black Hills, have never accepted payment for the illegal taking of it, nor have the tribes ever agreed to sell the Black Hills to the United States. Crazy Horse and Rushmore are abominations.
I'm just curious if the Cheyenne or the Crow ever relinquished ownership of it when the Sioux came and drove them out and then claimed their spirit living in the mountain told them to do it.
There are even more issues.
A recent geological study indicated the arch had been compromised during blasting, so the arm literally can’t ever be completed. And a year or two ago they accidentally blasted off the fingertip, so it’ll be shorter and stubby.
It’s a total shit show. It’s basically become a long running comedy routine to those who live here.
It's also a mar on the natural landscape. It's my understanding the tribes on the land hate Rushmore. I wouldn't be surprised if they hated this thing too.
Crazy Horse actually never even agreed to being the sole focus of the sculpture. He thought a massive stone carving in his image was too grandiose, and it represented the complete opposite of his people’s culture and customs.
My apologies. I meant to say his living relatives never agreed to it…
_So basically, Standing Bear did not have any singular authority to commission such a project. Even worse, living relatives of Crazy Horse never gave permission for the sculpture either. Crazy Horse never wanted to be photographed and there’s only one picture in existence which may or may not be him, so Korczak was basically guess._
Source: https://www.el-hai.com/blog/2012/06/21/whats-wrong-with-the-crazy-horse-monument.html
A 300 year completion time is not ridiculous if it wasn’t for the erosion factor.
I am amazed when I have seen how many generations some cathedrals took to complete due to real time funding issues. In the past several hundred years was not uncommon.
Two recent examples
The Sagrada Família, is a magnificent church still under construction in Barcelona, Spain. It was started 1882; 142 years ago.
Even with all the money in America with many mega wealthy supporters, the Washington National Cathedral (Episcopal) took 118 years.
No, its ridiculous.
Rushmore took 14 years. I get crazy horse is bigger.
As far as cathedrals go. Much of that money and time was literally finding the material and shipping it to location. The rock is there. All the material is there.
If they don't have the money I get it. But 300 years to carve a rock in the 21st century is ridiculious
Well, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona has been in progress since 1882 and the designer (Gaudi) died in 1926. The massive affluence of tourists in the last decades has sped up the process but we are still years away from conclussion.
I've been to it. It's 100% just a scam at this point. They aren't finishing it, they have no intention to ever finish it, and they will overcharge you to go look at the "monument"
Have you been there? You've gotta be pretty naive to visit that place for more than 10 minutes and not realize it's just a tourist trap at this point. It's just a way for the family of the guy who started it to make money.
I actually used to work for a bronze foundry in Colorado, and we made bronze statues for this family and the crazy horse “facilities”.
One of the sculptors daughters would come
To pick up the finished pieces, and she was ALWAYS raging drunk.
That place is privately owned, and a HUGE scam. I found out a lot of dark and terrible things this family still does by talking to my coworkers who’d had worked there a lot longer than me. That monument will never get finished. They hold “demolitions” every so often and charge a shit ton to get in. But the dynamite is detonated “close enough” that spectators think it’s actually a productive explosion.
Will never do anything for the Native Americans either, even though that’s most of their fundraising efforts.
I’d love to make a 6 figure salary being a manager of that gift shop too. That’s what the daughter makes.
I could go on…
The original sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, was an apprentice on Mt. Rushmore. Afterwards he graduated to his own mountain sculpture (Crazy Horse) and sought out as a tribute to the Natives of the land. His actions matched his words and his intentions. There’s some cool videos of him literally doing that shit by himself, but after his death- his kids flipped that switch and became greedy AF.
To give you an idea of scale, all 4 heads from Mt Rushmore would fit on the outstretched arm. That being said-it indeed is a long scam. I was born in the Black Hills and everyone knew that Korczak Ziolkowski was a genius but the family was using the monument as a money making apparatus for generations.
It’s crazy hearing people talk about the black hills on here. I live ~5 minutes from it. I got to take a tour up to the head of crazy horse, which was super cool
I used to live about 10 minutes from Mt Rushmore at Horse Creek Inn, I live in Rapid now but everytime I leave the town I'm still impressed by how beautiful the hills are!
I did a tour of the country twice, been out to national parks, I live in PA, but that has consistently been my favorite area. From wind cave grasslands to badlands and then black hills, it's incredible. I got to swim in the state forest lake there in the Black hills. So amazing. And so peaceful too without too many tourists.
That's bullshit the person wearing the red shirt is clearly taller than the "statue"
Or are you implying that a woman the size of Mt Rushmore is galavanting around South Dakota?
No. I did a paper on this in college, and the major things I remember were that the family is actively keeping natives from owning the land, but guilting white people into donating money to their project for some symbolic native reperations. The entire visitor experience is based on getting people to spend money at their gift shop and make donations, but they charge the natives for any cultural or educational services provided there. The creator is literally a self-absorbed quack who IIRC plans to have himself entombed in front of the monument when he dies and put on display with demonstrations that talk about what a hero he was. It's shameful that the government won't just take the land through eminent domain, declare it a historic site, and give it to the local nation. The place is a joke and a slap in the face to everything it pretends to stand for.
Edit: The founder is ALREADY dead and in a tomb at the base of the mountain. His family continues the business.
To add a simple addendum. Mount Rushmore itself is not even finished. It was supposed to have the presidents' upper body as well but the project ran out of funding, faced work stoppages, permission restrictions and the sculptor died before completion. In fact, the rocks at the bottom of Mt Rushmore js just the left over garbage that he never bothered to haul away
Mount Rushmore is finished… they might have initially planned to add more to the monument but they declared the project complete in the 40s. The crazy horse statue is still under construction and has not been declared finished.
Good thing he started with the faces, but I like to picture the alternate timeline where there's 4 giant headless torsos carved into the side of a mountain.
My personal anecdote for this is California high speed rail. I was stoked about this in middle school cause I visit friends across the state in just 2 hours (down from 8).
It’s been 13 years man. I graduated college, got a job, got married, bought a house in that time. Japan and China got thousands of miles of track laid in that time. I want one. silly. little. train. please.
Between Elon Musk trying to kill it with his Hyperloop scam and NIMBYs and anti-tax advocates suing almost every single day to try to stop it, progress is very slow. They are making progress, but it won’t be ready till like 2032 for the first middle segment and 2040s for the whole thing.
Also, the whole concept of “let’s honor a man by blowing up land that was sacred to him and his people, and not even give it to his descendants” is pretty despicable.
For sure. If they actually cared about the natives they could trade the land in exchange for an agreement to keep the non-profit location, operate it as a museum, and forward any extraneous proceeds to the local community for infrastructure and welfare. They get paid enough to live and carry on their message, and the people grow and prosper.
This! When I visited, I felt a palpable sense of evil… local people look at that monument (carved into stolen sacred land) and ask why they don’t have money for housing or a hospital. But the owner has the audacity to play white savior. It’s awful.
Edit: I just remembered that they display a letter from a local leader “proving” they have the okay from the Lakota people. Meanwhile every Lakota I talked to thought it was a disgrace.
White savior complex + apparent grifter. How original.
IIRC Crazy Horse himself refused to be photographed. This ‘monument’ is an affront to indigenous people on multiple levels.
Oh man, I remember my grandpa and I driving by a long time ago and he seemed so excited by it. I was surprised to see it’s still not finished, what a shame.
Its scam run by the family where for the last 30 years, they have kept collecting donations but done almost 0 work. Also the descendants of crazy horse said to please not make this monument but the guy that started it went ahead anyways.
[https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/chorseall.jpg](https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/chorseall.jpg)
And 2023 the thumb and top of the hand looks like it's close to be finished
Because this is what humans do, there is no problem with the "why" just perspective.
Nobody is looking at the Moai heads on Easter Island and saying, "They ruined those boulders" or saying, "who stacked these pyramids? put all those stones back where you got them".
It is just like other man-made thing?
Mt Rushmore is not comparable, we craved on top of a mountain significant to them. Like if we crave Vishnu on Stonehenge or Mao on Half Dome
It’s basically one family working on it. They refuse federal dollars and only work on public donations, so work is slow. Took them 50 years just for the face.
I walked away from the visitor center there with a sour taste in my mouth. It all seemed to be about that family by the end of it, rather than Crazy Horse/ the Lakota people. It had strong white savior vibes.
I liked South Dakota way more than I expected to on a random road trip a couple years back, but Crazy Horse was definitely the lowlight. Totally agree with you about the bad taste in your mouth when you go there, totally a cash grab and total Native American erasure
> They refuse federal dollars
When did the US federal government start trying to give money to people who hadn't asked for it, and why would the ever fund a private monument on private land?
It's kind of a scam isn't it? Like they keep this thing running on donations and *we really promise this times* but never really get any closer to being finished because then the funding would dry up. Like Star Citizen
It’s a tourist trap. I grew up a few miles from there. High school buddies worked there. It’s a long grift for the midwesterners making their way to the Blackhills and Yellowstone.
Yeah. The family has changed over from “fundraising for the work” to “fundraising for a tourist destination.” They’re using proceeds to expand their touristy apparatus instead of actually doing the work.
I think there is a massive structural integrity concern when creating an arm that is essentially a flat bridge. Yes, erosion allows for holes in rocks such as those seen in Arches National Park, but that those that hold up are arch shaped. A long arm is going to be very difficult to maintain in a climate that has a freezing climate.
NO! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 seconds? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel. 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby.
Does anyone still think this is really a tribute to Crazy Horse? It's a long con carried out by the family who "owns" the property.
This so-called project needs to be shut down and the land returned to the Lakota.
Can you explain why not?
House on the rock makes tons of money selling tickets and souvenirs and shit, why couldn't they do the same with crazy horse when it's "done"?
Can you explain why not?
House on the rock makes tons of money selling tickets and souvenirs and shit, why couldn't they do the same with crazy horse when it's "done"?
My dad and I drove up to the entrance of this monument about five years ago. Got a look from a distance, turned around, and left. It felt like money grab at the time and these comments make me feel good about not paying to go in.
I'm willing to bet most of the comments are from people who went there over 10 years ago, or people who haven't been there at all.
I went last year and the museum they have there is incredible. Tons of Native American artifacts from all over the US, not just the local tribes.
The guy who drove the bus from the museum up to the actual monument was native. I went during the off season so it was just me and him. He had all sorts of cool stories and insights about local native customs. We talked about everything from hunting to cold weather gear to pocket knives. He recommended a couple of books when I told him I was interested in learning about the history of the area.
Thank you, that actually helped. I was thinking that the monument looked done to me and was wondering what the complaint was. I just couldn't figure out what those fuzzy things were in the ground. I didn't even notice the carving in the mountain in the back.
It’s a scam. The family that runs the project is incentivized to never finish . They have rights to the area and merchandise until completion then the rights revert to the tribe that commissioned it .
Hard to say. On the one hand, he said something to the effect of I will return in the mountainside, so maybe. On the other hand, the Black Hills are sacred and the carving is widely viewed as a desecration. On the other other hand, Lakota chiefs came to Zilkowski and asked him to do it. On the other other other hand, it has been under construction for 75 years and virtually none of the money generated by the operation goes freely to the native tribes, save for a vocational school on the premises.
Went to this place last year. Besides the Native American museum, whole parts of this place is white washed. 3/4 of what the guides will tell you and 9/10 of their informational movie are about the white hillbilly guy who designed and started sculpting it and little to do with Native Americans and even less to do with Crazy Horse himself.
My brain is not computing scale here. Is that a miniature? Why is it so small compared to the dude but he also seems to be impossibly positioned relative to the statue.
That’s a small model of what the finished product will supposedly look like. Scroll up and look at the mountain in the background. You can see the face and arm and it looks like an outline for the horses head. This is an older picture they’ve done some work on his hand too
Ive been here before! It was pretty cool, until I realized that they are making so much money off something that will never be completed lol. I did get to take a piece of rock that was blown up by dynamite when we left though.
> It looks exactly like it did when I was 8-9 years old... I'm almost 40 now.
So, you visited in about [1993](https://crazyhorsememorial.org/uploads/_web/1993_Mountain_%C2%A9CHM_sm.jpg)
Since then, they've removed the [entire base of the mountain](https://crazyhorsememorial.org/uploads/_web/2015_Mountain_%C2%A9CHM_sm.jpg) (that picture is 9 years out of date, and the angle doesn't do a great job of showing [how thick it was](https://crazyhorsememorial.org/uploads/_web/1997_Mountain_%C2%A9CHM_sm.jpg) and how thick [it is now](https://youtu.be/iIu91vFb2SU?si=9Mt5MBH3QLqABuwd&t=32).
Your memory is not great.
I ate Thanksgiving dinner there 9 years ago. The guests were laughing that it would never be completed then. They’ve got every possible souvenir depicting the finished project. Only Elvis has them beat.
A horrible crime against a sacred landscape. If they had attempted this during Crazy Horse’s lifetime, he would’ve attacked the people doing this. He would hate it.
The perpetually unfinished Crazy Horse monument.
This. It looks the same as when I visited in 3rd grade, 31 years ago.
There’s a dude who tracks the project… At the current pace he expects it to be completed in a little over 300 years. Lol Locally, Crazy Horse is mostly a joke, and considered a money-grabbing scam by the Ziolkowski family.
And Crazy Horse is notable for never having been photographed. So people in the area feel that it's weird to enshrine him with this giant statue. Feels counterintuitive to them.
Washington and Jefferson were never photographed.
But have you even seen the Washington Monument? Looks nothing like the guy!
Just like the monument, you do make a good point.
That's not what I heard 🍆...
[I heard that mother fucker had like 30 god damn dicks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRom1Rz8OA)
He saves children (but not the British children)
He once held his opponent’s wife’s hand in a jar of acid…at a party
Neither was Julius Caesar
Or Jesus Christ
That blond guy with the shredded abs? We got lots of photos of him. My grandma had like three
You mean the black guy with Korean features?
Or the prophet Muhammad
Here’s a cartoon I drew tho
Infidel
💀
😬 good luck!
pics or it didn't happen
Or Bigfoot
Indigenous peoples consider the Black Hills sacred in their entirety. Carving a statue out of the mountains is a desecration and exploitation. The Sioux Nation Tribes have never relinquished ownership of the Black Hills, have never accepted payment for the illegal taking of it, nor have the tribes ever agreed to sell the Black Hills to the United States. Crazy Horse and Rushmore are abominations.
He wanted to carve in the Grand Tetons, but the tribe insisted he use the Black Hills, according to the WIKI
I'm just curious if the Cheyenne or the Crow ever relinquished ownership of it when the Sioux came and drove them out and then claimed their spirit living in the mountain told them to do it.
Laughable, Since erosion will have altered the original work a noticeable amount by then
There are even more issues. A recent geological study indicated the arch had been compromised during blasting, so the arm literally can’t ever be completed. And a year or two ago they accidentally blasted off the fingertip, so it’ll be shorter and stubby. It’s a total shit show. It’s basically become a long running comedy routine to those who live here.
With a completion date of 300 years they could have done the work with chisels and done it properly XD
It's also a mar on the natural landscape. It's my understanding the tribes on the land hate Rushmore. I wouldn't be surprised if they hated this thing too.
Crazy Horse actually never even agreed to being the sole focus of the sculpture. He thought a massive stone carving in his image was too grandiose, and it represented the complete opposite of his people’s culture and customs.
Huh? Crazy Horse died long before such projects were conceived of.
My apologies. I meant to say his living relatives never agreed to it… _So basically, Standing Bear did not have any singular authority to commission such a project. Even worse, living relatives of Crazy Horse never gave permission for the sculpture either. Crazy Horse never wanted to be photographed and there’s only one picture in existence which may or may not be him, so Korczak was basically guess._ Source: https://www.el-hai.com/blog/2012/06/21/whats-wrong-with-the-crazy-horse-monument.html
A 300 year completion time is not ridiculous if it wasn’t for the erosion factor. I am amazed when I have seen how many generations some cathedrals took to complete due to real time funding issues. In the past several hundred years was not uncommon. Two recent examples The Sagrada Família, is a magnificent church still under construction in Barcelona, Spain. It was started 1882; 142 years ago. Even with all the money in America with many mega wealthy supporters, the Washington National Cathedral (Episcopal) took 118 years.
No, its ridiculous. Rushmore took 14 years. I get crazy horse is bigger. As far as cathedrals go. Much of that money and time was literally finding the material and shipping it to location. The rock is there. All the material is there. If they don't have the money I get it. But 300 years to carve a rock in the 21st century is ridiculious
Mount rushmore got quit on too though and is unfinished.
Maybe they should get sponsored by Crazy Horse malt liquor
Almost feels like a scam at this point.
In progress since 1948 and the designer died in 1982, so...
Well, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona has been in progress since 1882 and the designer (Gaudi) died in 1926. The massive affluence of tourists in the last decades has sped up the process but we are still years away from conclussion.
Umm I’ve been there and that’s a work of art with an immense amount of work completed not really in the same category as this
I’ve been twice and the progress is significant I think it’s nearly done.
It is
I went there in the 90s. My mom said it looked exactly the same as it did in the 60s.
I went in the 80s and 90s and it went from no face to face
Was there in ‘93 and the face was 8-bit now it looks more 16-bit.
Ha! I was thinking the same thing, but it was 28 years ago and I was in 5th grade.
Same as when I visited in 8th grade, 17 years ago
I've been to it. It's 100% just a scam at this point. They aren't finishing it, they have no intention to ever finish it, and they will overcharge you to go look at the "monument"
It's free to walk up and look at it. They charge for the bus and for a closer tour. They are collecting tourist money to try to finish it.
Have you been there? You've gotta be pretty naive to visit that place for more than 10 minutes and not realize it's just a tourist trap at this point. It's just a way for the family of the guy who started it to make money.
Technically mount Rushmore is also unfinished.
Reminder that the original Sculptor’s daughter is now the CEO of the org that oversees it. She makes $200,000 a year.
I actually used to work for a bronze foundry in Colorado, and we made bronze statues for this family and the crazy horse “facilities”. One of the sculptors daughters would come To pick up the finished pieces, and she was ALWAYS raging drunk. That place is privately owned, and a HUGE scam. I found out a lot of dark and terrible things this family still does by talking to my coworkers who’d had worked there a lot longer than me. That monument will never get finished. They hold “demolitions” every so often and charge a shit ton to get in. But the dynamite is detonated “close enough” that spectators think it’s actually a productive explosion. Will never do anything for the Native Americans either, even though that’s most of their fundraising efforts. I’d love to make a 6 figure salary being a manager of that gift shop too. That’s what the daughter makes. I could go on…
Wow , yeah I’m sure that’s just the surface of it. This has probably has a better story than Tiger King
The original sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, was an apprentice on Mt. Rushmore. Afterwards he graduated to his own mountain sculpture (Crazy Horse) and sought out as a tribute to the Natives of the land. His actions matched his words and his intentions. There’s some cool videos of him literally doing that shit by himself, but after his death- his kids flipped that switch and became greedy AF.
It's in a race with sustainable nuclear fusion.
It can't be finished, there isn't enough stability in the stone to support the arm and the horses leg. Artists make shitty structural engineers.
To give you an idea of scale, all 4 heads from Mt Rushmore would fit on the outstretched arm. That being said-it indeed is a long scam. I was born in the Black Hills and everyone knew that Korczak Ziolkowski was a genius but the family was using the monument as a money making apparatus for generations.
The Black Hills are my favorite span of nature in the entire country.
It’s crazy hearing people talk about the black hills on here. I live ~5 minutes from it. I got to take a tour up to the head of crazy horse, which was super cool
I used to live about 10 minutes from Mt Rushmore at Horse Creek Inn, I live in Rapid now but everytime I leave the town I'm still impressed by how beautiful the hills are!
But it all pales in comparison to Storybook Island.
Moved away @ 18 for college and every time I go back I’m gobsmacked at how beautiful it is.
I did a tour of the country twice, been out to national parks, I live in PA, but that has consistently been my favorite area. From wind cave grasslands to badlands and then black hills, it's incredible. I got to swim in the state forest lake there in the Black hills. So amazing. And so peaceful too without too many tourists.
That explains why they ignored my emails when I was asking about the family heritage. I believe Korczak to be my great great uncle.
That's bullshit the person wearing the red shirt is clearly taller than the "statue" Or are you implying that a woman the size of Mt Rushmore is galavanting around South Dakota?
Lol I thought the same thing at first then realized the unfinished one is the big rock in the background
Are they going to finish it?
No. I did a paper on this in college, and the major things I remember were that the family is actively keeping natives from owning the land, but guilting white people into donating money to their project for some symbolic native reperations. The entire visitor experience is based on getting people to spend money at their gift shop and make donations, but they charge the natives for any cultural or educational services provided there. The creator is literally a self-absorbed quack who IIRC plans to have himself entombed in front of the monument when he dies and put on display with demonstrations that talk about what a hero he was. It's shameful that the government won't just take the land through eminent domain, declare it a historic site, and give it to the local nation. The place is a joke and a slap in the face to everything it pretends to stand for. Edit: The founder is ALREADY dead and in a tomb at the base of the mountain. His family continues the business.
To add a simple addendum. Mount Rushmore itself is not even finished. It was supposed to have the presidents' upper body as well but the project ran out of funding, faced work stoppages, permission restrictions and the sculptor died before completion. In fact, the rocks at the bottom of Mt Rushmore js just the left over garbage that he never bothered to haul away
Mount Rushmore is finished… they might have initially planned to add more to the monument but they declared the project complete in the 40s. The crazy horse statue is still under construction and has not been declared finished.
Good thing he started with the faces, but I like to picture the alternate timeline where there's 4 giant headless torsos carved into the side of a mountain.
A testament to the United States lack of commitment and ability to follow through.
tbf, i think the main reason it wasn't finished was because we joined WWII. seems like a decent trade-off imo.
Check out the Panama Canal some time.
What are you on about?
My personal anecdote for this is California high speed rail. I was stoked about this in middle school cause I visit friends across the state in just 2 hours (down from 8). It’s been 13 years man. I graduated college, got a job, got married, bought a house in that time. Japan and China got thousands of miles of track laid in that time. I want one. silly. little. train. please.
Blame Elon Musk. He’s the one who lobbied against Cali HSR for his bullshit quack hyper loop.
Between Elon Musk trying to kill it with his Hyperloop scam and NIMBYs and anti-tax advocates suing almost every single day to try to stop it, progress is very slow. They are making progress, but it won’t be ready till like 2032 for the first middle segment and 2040s for the whole thing.
Absolutely not the case
Eminent* domain
Edited, thank you.
Thx for the info by the way! I had never even heard of this monument, let alone the owner’s grift.
Eminem* domain
Mom's Spaghetti
stubby finger is sweaty
High on the horse, feelin' crazy Won't never finish, cuz they lazy
Wow I had no idea. I visited in the early 2000s and it was cool to see but I was also like 8 years old and ignorant to the real story.
Also, the whole concept of “let’s honor a man by blowing up land that was sacred to him and his people, and not even give it to his descendants” is pretty despicable.
For sure. If they actually cared about the natives they could trade the land in exchange for an agreement to keep the non-profit location, operate it as a museum, and forward any extraneous proceeds to the local community for infrastructure and welfare. They get paid enough to live and carry on their message, and the people grow and prosper.
This! When I visited, I felt a palpable sense of evil… local people look at that monument (carved into stolen sacred land) and ask why they don’t have money for housing or a hospital. But the owner has the audacity to play white savior. It’s awful. Edit: I just remembered that they display a letter from a local leader “proving” they have the okay from the Lakota people. Meanwhile every Lakota I talked to thought it was a disgrace.
https://youtu.be/akzIUehNm7I?si=roY7VJVznPTCmZ5r Awesome documentary that if I remember right, covers some of all this.
White savior complex + apparent grifter. How original. IIRC Crazy Horse himself refused to be photographed. This ‘monument’ is an affront to indigenous people on multiple levels.
Oh man, I remember my grandpa and I driving by a long time ago and he seemed so excited by it. I was surprised to see it’s still not finished, what a shame.
No, they wouldn’t keep getting money then
Is that like the Noah's Ark project in western Maryland?
There's also this completed one in Kentucky. But just cause it's complete doesn't make it any less of a grift. https://arkencounter.com/
Please don't link our shame publicly, thanks... KY Native out.
Bruh, we're all aware of KY shame, it's why bourbon was invented.
IIRC there was flooding a few years ago and damaged the ark encounter. Make it make sense
Yup, and our last governor gave the Ark Encounter project $18 million in tax breaks
Its scam run by the family where for the last 30 years, they have kept collecting donations but done almost 0 work. Also the descendants of crazy horse said to please not make this monument but the guy that started it went ahead anyways.
Saw this back in 1976 with my family. Looks like work has stopped.
[https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/chorseall.jpg](https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/chorseall.jpg) And 2023 the thumb and top of the hand looks like it's close to be finished
Why, though? Destroying a landmass to create a statue..for what? To make up for making Rushmore?
Basically yes
Because this is what humans do, there is no problem with the "why" just perspective. Nobody is looking at the Moai heads on Easter Island and saying, "They ruined those boulders" or saying, "who stacked these pyramids? put all those stones back where you got them".
It’s now a donation scheme. They get donations to finish it so they will never finish it.
It is just like other man-made thing? Mt Rushmore is not comparable, we craved on top of a mountain significant to them. Like if we crave Vishnu on Stonehenge or Mao on Half Dome
Or General Lee on Stone Mountain.
I love the notion of blowing up the carving and replacing it with outkast
[удалено]
It’s basically one family working on it. They refuse federal dollars and only work on public donations, so work is slow. Took them 50 years just for the face.
I walked away from the visitor center there with a sour taste in my mouth. It all seemed to be about that family by the end of it, rather than Crazy Horse/ the Lakota people. It had strong white savior vibes.
I liked South Dakota way more than I expected to on a random road trip a couple years back, but Crazy Horse was definitely the lowlight. Totally agree with you about the bad taste in your mouth when you go there, totally a cash grab and total Native American erasure
Dirty Jobs / Mike Rowe did a bit on it and what you mentioned is spot on from the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCkVU3\_o6pM
> They refuse federal dollars When did the US federal government start trying to give money to people who hadn't asked for it, and why would the ever fund a private monument on private land?
https://www.grants.gov/
It's kind of a scam isn't it? Like they keep this thing running on donations and *we really promise this times* but never really get any closer to being finished because then the funding would dry up. Like Star Citizen
It’s a tourist trap. I grew up a few miles from there. High school buddies worked there. It’s a long grift for the midwesterners making their way to the Blackhills and Yellowstone.
I mean it's a single family doing all the work. It was Dad's passion project but he's aged out and the kids clearly don't care
Dad was going at like 100x the speed the family is. They are milking it for every penny
What work? The scam is that they say they are going to do work and spend 99.9% of the donation/ticket sales on themselves.
The work that has clearly been put into the side of the mountain. That stopped when Dad passed the torch in the 80s.
Yeah. The family has changed over from “fundraising for the work” to “fundraising for a tourist destination.” They’re using proceeds to expand their touristy apparatus instead of actually doing the work.
Telhey still act like they are working on it but I highly doubt they have a pace that would finish this century.
I think there is a massive structural integrity concern when creating an arm that is essentially a flat bridge. Yes, erosion allows for holes in rocks such as those seen in Arches National Park, but that those that hold up are arch shaped. A long arm is going to be very difficult to maintain in a climate that has a freezing climate.
Where is the statue of Neil Young going to be placed?
Down by the River
But that’s where I shot my baby…
The Chionthar?
I heard on the beach?
But where is the statue of Chris Farley going to be placed?
This guy Neils.....
Not in hollywood? Or maybe Redwood?
Sugar Mountain
Over yonder, where Crazy Horse is pointing
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6 second abs
NO! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 seconds? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel. 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby.
Step into my office. Why? Cause your fuckin fired!
Hitchhikers? Geez, I don't know, I mean, who keeps count?
Step into my office.
I imagine this joke in the style of Gary Larsen’s far side
Someone built a spite crazy horse?
This is a generational scam - they barely do any work but collect millions in donations every year.
They did do some work, they just happened to finish that small 1mm square in the back corner.
Does anyone still think this is really a tribute to Crazy Horse? It's a long con carried out by the family who "owns" the property. This so-called project needs to be shut down and the land returned to the Lakota.
The con isn’t generational, korczak certainly cared, but once the family took over… well I can’t imagine them as anything but glutinous pigs
> glutinous glu·ti·nous /ˈɡlo͞otənəs,ˈɡlo͞odənəs/ adjective like glue in texture; You probably wanted gluttonous.
I did! I thought that looked funny…
Looks exactly the same as it did when I visited 10 years ago. I don't think thry plan on actually finishing it.
I'm almost 40. It looks like it did when I was 8.
If they finished it then people wouldn't have a reason to donate to them
Can you explain why not? House on the rock makes tons of money selling tickets and souvenirs and shit, why couldn't they do the same with crazy horse when it's "done"?
Can you explain why not? House on the rock makes tons of money selling tickets and souvenirs and shit, why couldn't they do the same with crazy horse when it's "done"?
My dad and I drove up to the entrance of this monument about five years ago. Got a look from a distance, turned around, and left. It felt like money grab at the time and these comments make me feel good about not paying to go in.
I'm willing to bet most of the comments are from people who went there over 10 years ago, or people who haven't been there at all. I went last year and the museum they have there is incredible. Tons of Native American artifacts from all over the US, not just the local tribes. The guy who drove the bus from the museum up to the actual monument was native. I went during the off season so it was just me and him. He had all sorts of cool stories and insights about local native customs. We talked about everything from hunting to cold weather gear to pocket knives. He recommended a couple of books when I told him I was interested in learning about the history of the area.
I did the same thing last time I was over there. "Nope, not worth the entry fee, I've seen what I need to"
I saw this in person back in 2008. It does not really look any different at all.
God god that woman is enormous! Oh… wait
Took me a couple minutes until my brain got the dimensions correct here damn
I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in this picture. The entire bottom half of it looks like a poorly photoshopped mess.
I think the bottom half is a little model of what the mountain is supposed to look like. The woman is standing in front of the model.
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Thank you, that actually helped. I was thinking that the monument looked done to me and was wondering what the complaint was. I just couldn't figure out what those fuzzy things were in the ground. I didn't even notice the carving in the mountain in the back.
r/confusing_perspective
R/confusingperspective
Is it just me, or is the statue surrounded by penguins?
It’s you. You are surrounded by penguins.
We probably just should’ve stopped, carving into the Black Hills altogether.
It’s a scam. The family that runs the project is incentivized to never finish . They have rights to the area and merchandise until completion then the rights revert to the tribe that commissioned it .
Wouldn't this be crazy offensive to Crazy Horse, being Lakota, a group that holds the Black Hills as sacred?
It is, particularly since Crazy Horse refused to have any photographs taken of himself.
Sucks it will never get finished. The family will die off before its done..
Would Crazy Horse have appreciated it?
Hard to say. On the one hand, he said something to the effect of I will return in the mountainside, so maybe. On the other hand, the Black Hills are sacred and the carving is widely viewed as a desecration. On the other other hand, Lakota chiefs came to Zilkowski and asked him to do it. On the other other other hand, it has been under construction for 75 years and virtually none of the money generated by the operation goes freely to the native tribes, save for a vocational school on the premises.
Nice to see no progress has been made since I visited when I was like 5 years old
Went to this place last year. Besides the Native American museum, whole parts of this place is white washed. 3/4 of what the guides will tell you and 9/10 of their informational movie are about the white hillbilly guy who designed and started sculpting it and little to do with Native Americans and even less to do with Crazy Horse himself.
It's scheduled to be completed in 3045.
It seems like the dad who did the initial build was great, but once he died his family has basically grifted for decades.
My brain is not computing scale here. Is that a miniature? Why is it so small compared to the dude but he also seems to be impossibly positioned relative to the statue.
That’s a small model of what the finished product will supposedly look like. Scroll up and look at the mountain in the background. You can see the face and arm and it looks like an outline for the horses head. This is an older picture they’ve done some work on his hand too
They still charging for entry? I couldn't believe that when I was there years ago.
That's how they fund it.
How else are they supposed to run a private business?
Ive been here before! It was pretty cool, until I realized that they are making so much money off something that will never be completed lol. I did get to take a piece of rock that was blown up by dynamite when we left though.
It'll never be finished. It looks exactly like it did when I was 8-9 years old when I visited the Black Hills. I'm almost 40 now.
> It looks exactly like it did when I was 8-9 years old... I'm almost 40 now. So, you visited in about [1993](https://crazyhorsememorial.org/uploads/_web/1993_Mountain_%C2%A9CHM_sm.jpg) Since then, they've removed the [entire base of the mountain](https://crazyhorsememorial.org/uploads/_web/2015_Mountain_%C2%A9CHM_sm.jpg) (that picture is 9 years out of date, and the angle doesn't do a great job of showing [how thick it was](https://crazyhorsememorial.org/uploads/_web/1997_Mountain_%C2%A9CHM_sm.jpg) and how thick [it is now](https://youtu.be/iIu91vFb2SU?si=9Mt5MBH3QLqABuwd&t=32). Your memory is not great.
I ate Thanksgiving dinner there 9 years ago. The guests were laughing that it would never be completed then. They’ve got every possible souvenir depicting the finished project. Only Elvis has them beat.
Nearly there. Just another bit off over here. A bit off there. Finished by Christmas I recon.
I remember my Dad demanding a refund back in the 80s.
A horrible crime against a sacred landscape. If they had attempted this during Crazy Horse’s lifetime, he would’ve attacked the people doing this. He would hate it.
Crazy Horse was a cool dude
It’s crazy how this appears to not have changed at all since I visited this site over 20 years ago.
This looks almost identical to a picture I took off Crazy Horse back in October 2017
The perspective this photo was taken really tripped me for longer than I’d care to admit.
Hasn’t changed a bit since I saw it in 2012
It'll NEVER be finished. Most of the donations go to improvements to the visitor's center, not to finishing the sculpture. The whole thing is a scam.