One last thing...

It wasn't clear to me when I visited yesterday as to how the land was first acquired to build the memorial, so I looked it up this morning:

"The land used for the Crazy Horse Memorial was originally public land managed by the U.S. government before it was acquired through a series of property swaps and private purchases.

The Original Owner

The mountain itself, Thunderhead Mountain, was part of the Black Hills National Forest and was under the control of the U.S. Forest Service. Historically, the broader Black Hills region was the sacred homeland of the Lakota Sioux, which the U.S. government broke treaties to seize in the late 19th century.

How the Land Was Acquired

When Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear commissioned sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski in 1939 to create the monument, the Native leaders did not legally own the mountain. The acquisition happened in stages:

• The Initial Proposal & Swap: In 1939, Chief Henry Standing Bear wrote to the Department of the Interior, offering to trade 900 acres of his own fertile, private tribal land in exchange for the barren mountain site to secure government permission. The government agreed to issue a usage permit.

• Mining Claims: When Ziolkowski arrived in South Dakota to begin work full-time in 1947, he initially secured his footprint on the mountain by filing a mining claim.

• Private Purchases & Official Swaps: Ziolkowski subsequently used his own funds to buy adjacent properties. He later negotiated a formal land exchange with the federal government to swap his acquired properties for the deed to Thunderhead Mountain.

Today, the mountain and its extensive surrounding grounds are entirely privately held land operated by the non-profit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation. Because the founders deliberately refused federal funding to avoid government control, the land remains completely independent of the national park system."