The article examines the long-running construction of the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, portraying it as an ambitious counterpart to Mount Rushmore and a tribute to Lakota leader Crazy Horse and Native American history. It argues that the project’s scale, history and persistence make it culturally significant, while acknowledging enduring questions over its completion, funding and the appropriateness of carving the mountain.

The memorial was proposed in 1939 by Oglala Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear and has been under construction since the first blast in 1948. Designed by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, it is planned to stand 563 feet high and 641 feet long; Crazy Horse’s 87-foot face was completed in 1998, but the wider work remains unfinished. The privately run non-profit has not accepted government funding, and Ziolkowski’s family continues to oversee the carving using modern surveying and cutting technology.