By Rachel - 7/4/06

Today we went to the Crazy Horse Monument. Did you know that Crazy Horse is an Indian, and that on the rock, his head is 87 ½ feet high? The Indians wanted a monument to honor their heroes like the White Man had their heroes on Mt. Rushmore. Crazy Horse isn’t like Mount Rushmore which has the design on just one side. Crazy Horse has the design on 3 sides. Crazy Horse was started by a Polish man by the name of Korczak Ziolkowski. He started it alone because he only had $178 of his own. He had to climb 700+ steps with a jack hammer and carry all of his other tools up all of those stairs just to get up there. He bought an old tractor and he used that for his electricity because he was so poor. He had to walk up and down those steps about seven times a day to crank up the tractor. During his project, he got married to a lady named Ruth, and they had 10 children. Did you know that all four of the faces on Mt. Rushmore would fit on the back part of Crazy Horse’s head? Korczak Ziolkowski worked with Gutzen Borglum, the man who carved Mt. Rushmore. Korczak Ziolkowski died in 1982. His family took over the job. The family does the job al by themselves because they will not let the government take over the job. They think that the government would change it later or not finish it. Seven of the 10 children work on the mountain. They had five girls and five boys. After we were done t Crazy Horse, then we went to Custer State Park. We saw a buffalo herd, pronghorns, and deer. We saw a baby deer. I got five postcards, other cards with pictures on them, and a magnet.