CUSTER, SOUTH DAKOTA, June 26, 2006: There’s a project akin to the famous Kailasanatha Temple in India being produced here in South Dakota. In 1948, a sculptor named Korczak Ziolkowski began carving a 600-foot high mountain into a statue of the famed Indian warrior Crazy Horse. He was one of the last Sioux tribe leaders, and noted for defeating Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, June 25, 1876.
The statue of the chief riding on a horse will be 563 feet high and 641 feet long. The head of the chief is itself 87 1/2 feet high. The horse’s head is 180 feet high. The statue is to commemorate a famous statement of the chief when he was asked after being defeated, “Where are your lands now?” He replied, pointing over his horse’s head, “My lands are where my dead lay buried.” Only the chief’s head is finished, the rest of the mountain is rough cut. There is no projected completion date.
The Kailasanatha Temple was carved out of a single mountain in the 7th century ce, with the removal of 200,000 tons of rock and took 100 years to complete. The base of the completed temple is about 270 feet by 160 feet, with a height of 90 feet.
What impressed us was the method of “carving.” A graded regime of explosives are used to first rough shape the mountain, then blast it more and more finely into its ultimate shape. Final finishing is done with heat by a “jet finishing torch.” Details of this unique carving method are here. They can control the explosives to remove anywhere from 30 feet to just a few inches of rock at one blast.