as our two thousand and twelve stooges rally coverage continues we visit the crazy horse memorial ok now i am inside we've got pat dobbs with me i t j and we saw a little bit of the dust blowing from the blast yes how much was blasted today well i don't want to tell you i don't know if i'll make you feel any better for not seeing absolutely everything it wasn't one of our largest blast but it was a little unique in that we had two areas shot at one time and it removed about five hundred times and earlier in the wake the sturgis motorcycle crowd also got to see a blast that removed a little over nine hundred tons that was on monday and sold so far this week a little over fourteen hundred fifteen hundred tons in into shots and all of that work is to continue the effort on roughing out the shape of that giant horse's head nail did the amount of the blas t how many more tons per week are you guys blasting off currently actually of the folks are tracking along and we post a lot of this on facebook as well as on the web page they're going to notice th numbers are down and here's why the as the work gets closer and with each blaster moving within what they want to and the rough shaping process you stop about twenty feet from your final they're getting close enough now in that area of the horse's nose that they're becoming a little more refined and working with the engineers and geologists to make sure they're doing what they're doing and i've always monitored the vibration rats not the issue so they tend to be a little smaller and not as often because now the measuring becomes more intense simultaneously in the last time you were here we were talking about the effort that ruth kicked off a year ago to start work on the final phase of as well sell i'll give you a quick overview on the update on the hand that they have continued to work with the engineering and geology consultants and if you remember if i didn't tell you i should have told you on the backside on the far side of the mount where the area we can't see now you're less than four feet away on that padded extension of your hand right here so the ability to just split off from rock and gold right to the torch is literally and i don't mean to be cliche but literally it's a hand on top of the back of the hand is that arm slopes you've only got seven to seven and a half feet of rust cover left and at that area where we see on the very far right of the mountain that approximates where their fingers going to be they don't need to remove any more rough blasting they're right there wow it's all about what the geologists in the engineering guys do is they take a look at all the data they surveyed the mountain they searched they surveyed the models they cut all the data points in the computer and they do the overlay as they say here's chocks art here is the reality of the granite we have within any rock formation natural fissures are they such that maybe it's a line that's kind of like a facial blemish it goes off with more splitting and ultimately goes away or is this one of those seams where very large blocks of rock all come together now that it of itself is not necessarily a worry it's a matter of at what angle and  what did he have in mind as an example the tilt of the horse's ear does it conflict with the existing seam does it stick out far enough that that weight becomes a long term issue the engineer people have looked at all the stuff that korczak had in mind and what the mountain is a up to and they've said it'll handle everything that he asked for here is the long term challenge in some cases it's the matter of the weight that's not  supported underneath and a lot of these models forces head tips away from the rest of the mountain there's no rock underneath it all entirely possible hundred thousand tons of rock if you want to do that long term we are going to recommend steel bolting and angles we leave iraq underneath on his models it's the left rear leg that's raised maybe we have the right leg raised and acts like a solid column of rockets all supported we have less need for manmade fixes so in like you he said looked it is not going to look as beautiful as my model does but i'll tell you what you come up that road or you're in an airplane a hundred miles away you're going to see my warrior pointing to his land  that is going to be there are going to look exactly the same no but i'm not worried about family knows what i want public knows what i want so yeah it's going to happen now we talk about him we'll come back around to the blasting in the close up on the the work and by now the bulldozers  and what they're doing is they're reducing we're now in that area of three hundred forty to three hundred sixty feet below the top of the crazy horse warriors head and they're as they move in and they're defining what is going to be that area just under the nose and depending upon your horsemanship you can call it the muzzle you can call it the nose i've heard some people call it the chin so it's all at this point we're very close to the rough production blasting the shapes that area of the horse's head now the other significant things for folks who are trying to understand how much has been removed i can give you pictures from one thousand nine hundred two it's been thirty years ago this year the court shot passed away and that time he brought the rock down to where he was fifteen feet above the arm as we see it today and he had the area mapped out as to where the face was going to go he said always said i made one guess on this mall where the tip of the writer's noses and everything else falls into place it's also based on the measurements from the very top of the crazy horse and so he blocked up coming down from the far right and coming in and he actually was down and underneath what's going to be that horse's head so was interesting as we go forward and we bulldoze away a rock that's already been broken in mounted gas and said he's revisiting the areas that he was in as a child with his father and determined every single before even the kids were grown to do everything else that they needed that's correct a in a in ruth that would spend time in the library or what was also known as core chuck's room and they mapped out a three volume set of books and he was able to project not only what's going to happen on the mountain and he started talking about what's going to happen with the visitor visitor facility what's going to happen with the saw all of that and what's astounding is now you're thirty years after he has passed away and it's coming through and just on wednesday yesterday we had the third summer university program the completion ceremony for the students that came to us from seven states and thirteen tribes and they have finished there for first summer or actually their first semester of college level classes they've got up to fourteen credits they've already nailed it and how they spent their summer and the kind of dedication that they happen and i think to them as you know all that really hats off i mean stop and think about when we were all humans were young and i can barely remember when i was young but spending my first summer after high school with more studies was not real high on my priority list so these young people that have really stepped up and took a quite a prestigious opportunity and a number of them left not only with their college credits money in their pocket from the paid internship but crazy horse but they also work and several of them earned scholarships so they're in there in good standing as i get ready to go on the small and that was one in  it's just not a tourist attraction no no it was as big concern in the other one as he wanted to give the indian people not only the honor and respect a monument that points out that they not only have had historically years but they continue to have great people but they also wanted to give their offer them the opportunity of something with education that was a tool that they could not only maintain their cultural to traditions but they could also live in the the new world as it develops and it's he said you gotta find it you gotta take it and then you return it to your people so you can help nourish them now one other thing that we didn't really discuss philanthropic community its annual award for the top giving and not only in terms of dollars but i think the lifetime commitment to helping others teach any sanford is known throughout the country and most of his projects have been related to education and health care and health care as it has again toward the young he was also a friend of them people who are friends of  also became a friend and sort of that in two thousand and seven he decided i'm going to lay out a challenge for the rest of the public likes crazyhorse i'll contribute up to five million i'll match you dollar for dollar and dollar for dollar up in million dollar increments the public responded to that the blasting industry continued to give explosives the heavy equipment people continue to give service and equipment and danny was very generous he counted all those things toward his match and at the end of two center and in doing so he was matching a gift from a couple from here in south dakota muffy and paul christian their retired bankers and they have established the five million dollar open endowment called the crazy horse and and the investments from that gift pays for the university operations and it needed a place and the christians talk to mr sanford and he built the two and a half million dollar living learning center and he was and they gave and he says well i'm going to get into an ass i got to come up with another two and a half so he did and he directed that money toward the mountain project as well so all told denny sanford is responsible for ten million dollars to crazy horse directly out of pocket and inspiring other people to give so there's another five and through that you see the new equipment that's going to be used in defining the hand and the finger it also was funded this very important study this this determines everything from here on on the progress on the mountain how it's done and how we do it and it also does the blasting that's going to finish up the horse's head here probably in the next year or so as far as that production lasting i on the money from denise sanford and his commitment to this project and probably donating several million more over the next year and two i'm sure it's going to happen lifetime and for sure completed in the lifetime of his children and grandchildren ruth joke of he's eighty six she's been a crazy horse sixty five of those years no one wants this done sooner of course and but she also wants it done right and she's made a commitment to denny that we're going to get this done this as quickly and as safely and as economically as we can you know it'll be very interesting to see what see how it goes and i'm excited because i think we're going to see some major changes happen i think in that you know again we talked earlier about the potential that you're hoping to do the timeline of all the footage so you can put that very long term story into something of a difficult spot and then we're almost a platitude to mention the one we get around to another site so that you know folks can see the from here it's flat you can't appreciate how much of a mountain between us and dollars and three cans of food well what happens is it's even even a little less than that three cans of food per person or money if you like and that goes to the regional k o t a carriage share food drives and helps our feed in south dakota food bank in rapid the volks march association is the actual sponsor of the walk and they have a twelve dollars fee crazy horse does not otherwise charge admission that fee helps with the nationwide effort to not only through things t horse but also with their watch elsewhere and that first full weekend in june is the one time of the year that the public can walk crazy horse and you're on a tight budget here worried about the person fee the rest of the year you more about crazy horse and the monument and the beautiful structure that it is becoming always a plaza tollway thank you very much thank you look forward to seeing these in l c were also our journeys take us while we're here here's a little bit of a close up of that area all the bulldozing more of that rock and blasting more over time since i'm doing this by myself this year zooming in and out with a remote just didn't quite happen the way i had hoped so we had our heads kind of cut off there but we're taking a look back so i was a bit quieter and there's a few structures still remaining from years truth the stablished and the reason that they did that korczak never took a salary in all the years that he worked on the crazy horse mountain but he needed to provide for his family so he established a dairy and  beef cattle herd as well as they had chickens and all the other typical animals that you would have in a ranch not only to feed the family but you would sell off from time to time to raise money and be a cowboy and that's part of the current beef cattle herd that adam jewel tusky now has he and his late sister and for a number of years they were referred to and madam so they became known in the family as the eighteen and they took on the operation of the herd and its on crazy horse property and they also had a great scene right on the adjoining forest service land and for those who may not be aware in south dakota where we do not have a income tax the primary generator of local revenue for government services is property tax and the lowest possible property tax bracket is the farm ranch an agriculture designation and here you have a south dakota's oldest and largest certified tree farm as well as the historic ties to ranching which predates courtship by this property and forty seven sixty five years ago it's been a homestead ranch operation and even though crazy horse memorial is a nonprofit foundation it still has to pay property tax so to keep the least amount of money leaving in the most of it directed to the mountain project as well as other programs the family in the foundation maintains the tree farm as well as the beef cattle herd so they can qualify for the agriculture property tax classification and we're seeing a little bit of a back area that the public doesn't usually get to see that's because we're actually looking at a couple of rocks that i'm going to take back that are bigger than usual and going to help my mom out so we'll take a look at a little bit more of the facility before we head out of here though but before we go and check some of the main facility here this is the original milking  would have been the very early nineteen fifties was considered among some of the most modern equipment for a dairy operation in the black hills region it was almost semi automated and the adjoining to that of librarian steve is a rancher on his own in addition to working here a crazy horse and he and he an adam right right over the herd here it seems like it could be a  so the entertainment is over with but this is the skill model that course created and it is one thirty four th now part of what during earlier in the conversation pat was talking about the horse's leg and you can see that  carving like that is going to weigh a lot and the horse's head hanging out like that and see that angle there that is a lot of weight yes the finger is a lot of weight and there's some question as to whether going back to the body of a horse horse's head all up there are they do take a bus ride around the base of the mountain and eventually there will be a carving side of the mountain as well a lot of work if you can imagine all of that the decorations here weapons are on display everywhere you look  there is just so much to see there is so much education to learn all of these things showcase and behind this wall are two seaters that showed twenty minute film the history of the carving i'm going to save this back room for a little bit later we're going to go to where they used to sleep come out to the native american cultural education center some of the tools has the original future of the whole memorial  and it was created by some students professor if i want to say minnesota and then some other students from a competing college saw it and said we can do better and so they created this and so it looks like the ripples ition this so you can look at how it will eventually be including football stadium university learning center and so much more to learn more about the memorial and variety of events please visit crazy horse memorial dot org and on facebook at crazy horse memorial while in sturgis camping combinations provided by the broken spoke can't crown learn more about all the entertainment bans and camping at broken spoke at ground dot com please visit my archive page at seattle community media dot org slash node slash one two three seven four slash list shows and as always thank you for watching