New crane will speed progress at Crazy Horse Memorial
Progress toward the completion of Crazy Horse Memorial is set to get a big boost thanks to an even bigger crane it’s just received—and we mean a very big crane. It required multiple semi trucks just to deliver the crane to the mountain, and will revolutionize the carving process at the memorial.
The hook height of the crane is 218 feet and will rise above Crazy Horse’s head about 50 feet. It weighs about 25,000 pounds and also has a new 15,000-pound robotic arm. The arm itself weighs about twice as much as an elephant. It also boasts an incredible 263-foot reach around the mountain.
Before reaching Crazy Horse, the crane came on a boat across the Atlantic from Biberach, Germany. It was unloaded in Houston, Texas, where it was inspected and then hauled to Custer on a whopping 17 trucks, and the robotics shipped on a dedicated flatbed.
“The memorial anticipates it may speed progress up to three times the current rate,” said Caleb Ziolkowski, chief mountain officer and grandson of Korczak Ziolkowski, who began the project of carving Crazy Horse.
Crazy Horse memorial is now 76 years in the making, with work first beginning on the mountain in 1948. The history of the mountain is as epic as its proportions—Crazy Horse’s face, completed in 1998, is 87 feet and six inches tall; his arm, 253 feet and his mere finger nearly 30 feet long. His horse will also boast a 219-foot tall head, a 62-foot mane, and 54-foot ears.
The crane will drastically improve the carvers’ access to the mountain and ability to get people, material and equipment to and from particular locations without the need for roads or to drive equipment to whatever part of the mountain is being worked on. Having and maintaining roads is usually difficult and sometimes impossible for many locations on the mountain.
“We’re always looking for ways to improve ‘access’ to different parts of the mountain,” said Ziolkowski. “Access is one of the critical yet frequently unappreciated dictators of the sequencing and methods of carving the mountain.”
Since carving began on the mountain, they have primarily relied on three means of moving equipment and tools: human power, vehicles and cranes.
The larger equipment, like excavators, bulldozers, machine-mounted drills, etc., have been limited to areas where there is road access, which just isn’t feasible for many spots around the carving. That represents a major efficiency loss, said Ziolkowski, because using the larger equipment can make people between two to 20 times more productive, depending on the task. The memorial knew a large crane would be a tremendous help and would eliminate the obstacle of needing road access to certain parts of the carving.
“As we were looking into different cranes available, we quickly saw that large tower cranes have the reach and capacity to move heavy loads virtually everywhere within the active carving. We knew the right tower crane could be a game changer for us, if we could afford it and find a way to install it at the right location on the mountain,” said Ziolkowski.
The tower crane and robotic arm have a list price of approximately $5.2 million. Various companies involved in the purchase have made it possible for Crazy Horse Memorial to secure the equipment for just $3.75 million. An anonymous donor issued a match opportunity, providing $2.5 million while the memorial raised the other $1.25 million from its supporters.
It was the generosity of the anonymous donor who made the acquisition of the equipment a reality in the late summer of 2023, but before it could be installed, there was a lot of work that needed to be done at the mountain to get ready for it.
The mountain crew has been busy lately preparing the site on the back side of the carving. Before the crane could go in place, they first had to remove quite a bit of rock from the area and do some additional carving to achieve a finished grade on the back side of the arm.
“We have cut and removed over 190 blocks weighing more than 2,300 tons on the back side of Crazy Horse’s left arm. Also, since the late summer 2024, we have been very active with radial arm saws on the back side of Crazy Horse’s left arm, bringing us within an inch of finished grade on over 2,700 square feet of the carving. For comparison, this is more than half of the square footage of Crazy Horse’s face,” said Ziolkowski.
To handle the massive forces that operating the crane will produce, a large pad has been engineered to hold the crane in place on the mountain. The octagonal pad will be 28-feet wide and eight-feet deep, with the surrounding mountain being carved to allow the pad to fit in snugly. There are 16 anchor dowels going 45 feet into the rock below the pad, tying it into the mountain. Then, it will take over 20 concrete trucks to pour the pad.
Since it operates from one stationary point on the mountain, the exact spot the crane sits in needed to be strategically thought out. With a spot on the middle of the mountain, it has access to the entire carving.
“The location of the tower crane is crucial. Given its 267-foot reach, placing it in the middle of the carving allows it to reach all the way from in front of the horse’s head to behind Crazy Horse’s right elbow. To achieve this reach, the tower crane must be placed as close to Crazy Horse’s left arm as possible,” said Ziolkowski.
Along with the tower crane, the robotic arm will transform the carving process on the mountain. The weight of the robotic arm will be substantial, making it near impossible to move around the mountain in any other way than by crane.
The current carving process has four distinct phases: bulk rock removal, rough shaping, contouring, and finally, detail work. The industrial robotic arm can safely automate the contouring phase of the carving process.
Whether by robotics or manpower, the contouring process removes most of the remaining three to nine inches of rock, leaving the surface nearly finished. Currently, the contouring work is done by crew members who operate finishing saws. Skilled crew members then come to torch, add details and complete other finishing work.
“An industrial robotic arm can automate the contouring phase and do so in a safe, controlled way. A robotic arm would be both faster and more accurate than current technology allows with humans manipulating finishing saws,” said Ziolkowski.
The mountain crew will still have some work in moving, mounting, surveying and initiating the robotics, while the tool path planning and cutting will largely be done automatically by the robotic arm, with some human oversight to ensure accurate setups. Because of this crew members will now have more time and will be able to focus on the bulk rock removal, rough shaping and detail work phases—“all of which we have no shortage of work to complete,” said Ziolkowski.
Another advantage of the tower crane is that it opens the possibility of pulling large blocks of granite cut from benches without the need to break them apart.
“This cutting-edge equipment is nothing short of revolutionary in what it will allow the crew to do. A tower crane and robotic arm opens the door to options to further productivity increases,” said Ziolkowski.