Monday, June 3, 1996
Day 23
Custer, South Dakota to Rapid City, South Dakota
Today's Miles: 42
Cumulative Miles for the Tour: 1432
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Terrain: Rolling
Find of the Day: Crazy Horse Monument
Few times in my life have I come across something so inspiring, so mammoth in concept, that it out weighs everything else around it. The Crazy Horse Monument is one of those concepts.
The day started out with an easy ride planned, a short 40 miler that would include Crazy Horse Monument, Mount Rushmore and the Reptile Gardens in Rapid City. Highway 16 out of Custer has small shoulders and heavy traffic, as the tourist industry starts to crank up and every motor home in the state heads for Mount Rushmore. Seven miles out of Custer is the entrance to Crazy Horse Monument.
Sarah and Mark sitting on the 32nd scale model of Crazy Horse
with the mountain being carved one and a half miles away in the background
Korczak Ziolkowski was a Boston born orphan who was self taught in the art of sculpture. He was commissioned by a group of Indian tribes, in the late 1940's, to carve a mountain in honor of the legend of the Indian hero, Crazy Horse. Korczak spent the final 35 years of his life, dedicating himself to a project that he knew would never be finished in his lifetime, probably not even in the lifetime of his grandchildren.
The complete history of the mountain is too long to tell here, but Korczak began the sculpting of the mountain by himself. For the first five years he toiled on a scale that is incomprehensible, laying out the basic structure and format of what he KNEW would be the largest carving in the world. The sculpture is a representation of the Indian Brave, Crazy Horse, sitting upon his horse, pointing in the direction of the lands of his people.The head, alone, of the Indian hero, Crazy Horse, is to be over 6 stories tall, the finished carving higher than the Washington Monument. The completion of the head is scheduled for June of 1998, with no timetable to finish the sculpture. This is a privately funded project, with all grants offered by the United States government refused.The Crazy Horse Monument is a spiritual experience, similar to the mystical feeling of traveling through the southwest. Cars fly by the entrance everyday, glassy eyed drivers intent on getting to Mount Rushmore so they won't miss the next ranger's lecture on Borglum and his crew, blasting the faces of four presidents into the granite rock.I'm going to leave it at that. Those of you who are interested should do a search for "Crazy Horse Monument" on one of the search engines, or e-mail me with specific questions. If ever there was a "Howard Roark", Korczak Ziolkowski is the living incarnation of his image. This monument alone, makes it worth the time to travel to South Dakota.
Bike America Tours
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