Mount Rushmore & Crazy Horse: Two Monuments

Two mountain sculptures 17 miles apart in the Black Hills — Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial — that together represent the most concentrated monument complex in the United States, and that embody two entirely different and historically contested visions of the American West. Mount Rushmore (1927-1941) was carved by Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers over 14 years, removing 800 million pounds of granite to produce 60-foot faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt; the site receives three million visitors a year. The Crazy Horse Memorial (begun 1948, still in progress) is the response: initiated by Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear and executed by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and his family, the eventual completed sculpture will be 641 feet long and 563 feet tall — the largest sculpture in the world. After 75+ years of work it remains unfinished, a fact that its organizers view as part of the point.