A Complex Process, Stated Simply

The actual carving of Crazy Horse Mountain continues with a perfect, and necessary, blend of skill and knowledge in engineering, geology, and art. These abilities are contained within a select group of dedicated Mountain Crew Members who are willing to work hard. The members of the Crazy Horse Mountain Crew are experts in equipment operation and engineering. Safety is the Crew’s top priority.

The carving process is deeply complex. With the Mountain as the centerpiece of the Crazy Horse Mission, and an exposed work-of-art in progress, it is a perpetual conversation piece. Sharing pertinent facts for such conversations is truly important to us at the Memorial.

Simplified, and viewing the picture fully “zoomed-out”, Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski’s scale model, increased exponentially, is being carved in granite to honor all North American Indians. The finished sculpture of Lakota Warrior Crazy Horse upon his Steed will be 563’ high and 641’ long.

When zoomed in to view more detail, the process gains complexity.

Measure, Survey, Repeat

A vital step in telling this story in stone is ensuring Sculptor Korczak’s masterpiece fits within its granite boundaries. Korczak himself relied on artistic estimates and his incredibly trained eye and natural feel for dimensions and scale. He used a combination of his artistic visual ability, tape measures, and a beautiful old theodolite (survey instrument) to determine the basic location of his model within the Mountain and to begin the process of removing excess rock.

In the late 1980s, after Korczak had passed away and the progressing Sculpture was under the direction of his wife Ruth, a 48-foot long measuring boom was fixed to the top of Crazy Horse's Head to accomplish carving Crazy Horse’s Face. Daughter of Korczak and Ruth, and former Mountain Carving Director, Monique Ziolkowski, spent countless hours gathering exact measurements using the pointing system on her Dad’s 1/34th scale model of Crazy Horse's Face. A plumb bob suspended from the measuring boom was then used to transfer numbers to the Mountain.

Currently, Caleb Ziolkowski, Ph.D., a grandson of Founders Korczak and Ruth Ziolkowski, serves as the Chief Mountain Officer.

Existing systems for measuring have evolved steadily throughout the course of history, yet, this step has remained basically the same since the beginning; measure the scale models and transfer the measurements, multiplied exponentially, to the Mountain. Now, measurements are gathered from several working scale models, ranging from 1/34th to 1/300^th, which have evolved with gained knowledge of the Mountain’s geology.

The Crew relies on laser scanners that provide a three-dimensional computer model of the planned sculpture from working scale models. Laser scanning equipment has been used to measure the entire Mountain on several occasions. This technique allows for measuring many points quickly and accurately and then to build 'digital models' of the Mountain in engineering computers, which allow us to see Korczak’s model inside the Mountain.

On the Mountain, a survey control system was developed after Crazy Horse’s Face was completed. This instrument, known as a Total Station, measures very precise angles and distances from known control points to calculate three-dimensional coordinates for any point on the Mountain. It uses an infrared beam reflected from a hand-held prism to measure distances up to several thousand feet with accuracy to the nearest 1/1000th of a foot.

Collectively, these techniques and tools provide measurements and coordinates for the Carvers to guide them in removing the rock that covers the Sculpture.

So how do they remove the rock?

Carving Process

The present-day Carving Process has four distinct phases, with specific tools prevalent in each stage:

Bulk rock: removal of bulk rock (rock that is roughly five feet or further from finished grade), using cable saws and rock drills—machine-mounted or hand-operated —to cut large, rectangular blocks.

Rough shaping: removal and rough shaping of the remaining five feet of rock, again using cable saws and hand-operated drills to cut blocks shaped to mirror finished grade.

Contouring: removing most of the remaining 3 to 9 inches of rock using finishing saws, typically cutting to within an inch of finished grade by closely following the contours of the shape of the final carving.

Detail work: performing final detail work, using a variety of tools including, inter alia, torches, hand-held rock saws, and hammers and chisels.

The New Equipment’s Impact

Robotic Arm

An industrial robotic arm is, to put it basically, able to automate the contouring phase. It can do so in a safe, controlled way. While moving, mounting, and initiating the robotic arm requires human intervention (the same as for finishing saws), the planning and cutting requires minimal human effort. This will free Crew Members to focus on the bulk rock, rough shaping, and detail work phases—all of which we have no shortage of work to complete.

Tower Crane

The weight of the robotic arm once fully integrated will be substantial— around 15,000 pounds (about twice the weight of an elephant). It is not feasible to consider moving it around the Mountain in any other way than by crane. We did not have a crane that would allow us to move it to most locations on the Mountain. A large tower crane changes this dramatically. Yet, to describe a tower crane as simply a way to move the robotic arm understates its value vastly.

Access is one of the critical yet frequently unappreciated dictators of the sequencing and methods of carving the Mountain. Since work started on the Memorial, we have primarily relied on three means of moving equipment and tools: human power, roads and vehicles on wheels or tracks, and cranes. Under this paradigm, our larger equipment (excavators, bulldozers, machine-mounted drills, etc.) have been limited to areas where we have road access. Many locations do not have road access because it is prohibitively expensive or impossible to make and maintain a road to them. This represents a major efficiency loss up until now as the larger equipment can make people two-to twenty-times more productive, depending on the task.

Finally, a tower crane opens the possibility of pulling large blocks of granite cut from benches without the need to break them apart. Granite is a sought-after building material. The Memorial has many future building opportunities to consider.

Work in Many Areas

The Mountain Crew continues to steadily remove rock from several areas. With the Carvers split into smaller groups, safely and deliberately speckled across the Sculpture in Progress, it is quite a sight that has only been imagined to this day.

For weekly facts about the work on the Mountain, check out our #MountainMonday posts on