Summer Vacation Redux #12: Crazy Horse Monument

The next question on my day's itinerary was: "Would my luck with no crowds last for my visit to the Crazy Horse Monument?"  Leaving Rushmore I high-tailed it over to this, the second most famous of Black Hills tourist sites.  And what did I discover?  There were lots of people, but nothing that was inhibitively crowded.  (And yes, I just made up the word "inhibitively," feel free to use it when appropriate, too!)

 This was my view from the monument's parking lot.  The actual monument is really far away from the museum--it's 40 times more massive than Mount Rushmore and taller than the Willis Building in Chicago.  If you want to pay more money--and the entrance fee was $22 dollars--you can take a ride in a school bus to get closer...  It's only fair to say at this point, I'm going to criticize aspects of this place in a serious manner.  Please understand, it is not a reflection on my belief that this is a needed, beautiful, and laudable monument that is an essential and under-represented part of our American story.  You've been warned.

 A zoom lens camera certainly helps!

Once inside the Welcome Center I was just in time for a 20 minute film on the memorial.  Awesome, I thought.  I'll get to learn all about Crazy Horse and Oglala-Lakota people.  Um, no...  Scarcely 2 minutes of the 20 was spent on the Native Americans.  I learned that some long dead chief invited the Polish-American sculptor from Boston who had been an assistant on the Mount Rushmore project to take on the design and execution of this monument.  I don't recall the chief's name--the artist's name was Korczak Ziolkowski.  And he took on the project pretty much because he didn't have anything else to do.  For the first seven years he also pretty much climbed the mountain on his own and removed dirt and rocks one bucketful at a time living in a tent and presumably eating pinecone seeds and ground squirrels.  He refused any government help, but then he married a woman twenty years his younger and started making babies.  Ten altogether, and nearly all of them grew up to work on the project with him.  In an hillarious anecdote, one of his sons drove a bulldozer right off of the mountain!  But landed in the "only soft rocks" on the place and was told by Korszak "you put it there, you get it out."  Side splitting stuff...

As to Crazy Horse, I learned that he was brave and that some anonymous union soldier stabbed him in the back and killed him...  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  I thought, is this really a Crazy Horse Monument OR is it the Korczak Ziolkowski family memorial?  Seriously.  Even today his kids run the excavation--which is why it's progressing at a snail's pace--the gift shop, the welcome center, the restaurant.  They charge exorbitant prices all for the good the "monument." 

And you have to ask yourself where the hell are the Native Americans?  Like why aren't any of the Oglala-Lakota people invested in this project?  Why aren't they EMPLOYED by the Ziolkowski clan?  I left the experience of the video feeling very cynical.  It was like an homage to the Great White Savior doing for the poor, unskilled, naive Native Americans what they weren't capable of doing for themselves.  Even if there had been any hint of a partnership, I would have felt better about it.  Okay, now the good stuff.

 The view from inside the Welcome Center.

 You leave the film and enter the greater welcome center consisting of a museum of Native American artifacts that includes a lot of information about not only the Oglala-Lakota people, but many other American Indian Nations.  The next few images are from this space.

Outside the center/museum is a wide patio that connects to the restaurant and another museum space.

The views of the monument are wonderful--especially if you have a zoom lens on your camera or smart phone or tablet--and lots of people do!

There is also a monumental model of the finished monument with good sightlines to the actual monument in progress. 

Inside an adjacent museum annex you will find more artifacts and images including this scale model that represents the finished project depicting it as not only a monument by also a Native American University with a proposed Medical Center, sports facility and some odd round earthen covered thingy that I didn't figure out the purpose of...

 From here you exit and discover a number of other statues.  Like this tribute to the victims of 9/11--and frankly, I found it very strange.  Like why a place that takes pride in eschewing all connections to the United States Government, feels it necessary to have a piece of this attack on the sovereignty of that government as another completely unrelated tourist attraction.  Oh, and they make it very clear that in spite of their libertarian ways they are a 501C3 tax-exempt organization, should you want to contribute.

 There is this pair of crazy horses--I'm guessing that was part of the inspiration... 

Gave me the chance to take this photo.

And there is this statue next to the entrance.  I thought it might be Crazy Horse, right?  But, no.  It's just some generic representation of stamina or fortitude...I couldn't find its title in my notes.