Carving Crazy Horse Update

Decades into its creation, work on Crazy Horse Memorial continues to transform the Black Hills landscape. KELOLAND's Kristen Haskell gives us an update on the carving process. 78 years after the first blast on Crazy Horse took place in 1948, the work continues on transforming a mountain to a massive tribute to the Lakota leader. And today, crews are reaching significant new milestones. The focus of the carving at the moment is the mane of the horse, which has resulted in uncovering the tip of the horse's ear. Workers expect the ear to be visible from below the mountain soon. We are currently carving the horse's mane below Crazy Horse's left stretched out hand. And when the shadows are right, you can see it really well. And so yeah, it's been going really well. We did about 20 vertical feet of carving in this last year. And I think there's potential to remove even more than that. The crew has moved away from using explosives to maintain the integrity of the carving. We used a number of different techniques to try to remove the rock without explosives, some of it being very labor intensive and hard, like shims and wedges, and then slowly progressing to diamond cable saws, which are a lot easier, a lot less holes to drill. And then the big thing about it is it's a lot easier on the rock that we leave behind to carve. A second tower crane is expected to be added eventually, allowing the crew to access more of the mountain. That second tower crane will really help us. It will allow us to work the entirety of the carving. Right now, we can really only reach two thirds of the carving. Members of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation are proud to see the carving process going strong and what it represents. No matter what happened to Native American culture, people would always have a place to come learn and be inspired by Native American culture. And I believe people do better when they know better. For the Foundation, that renewed energy is key to moving ahead. Now that we're making more visible progress, it's kind of reinvigorating the excitement around the project. And as I said earlier, the mountain is really the catalyst for all other parts of our mission to be successful, and it'll always be the centerpiece. In the Black Hills, Kristen Haskell, KELOLAND News. The carving of Crazy Horse relies solely on donations and private contributions.