All four heads of Mount Rushmore could fit inside the head of the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota. This episode tells the multi-generational story behind it: the Lakota warrior who never signed a treaty and died resisting imprisonment in 1877, the Oglala Lakota elder Henry Standing Bear who wanted the white man to know the red man has great heroes too, and the Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski who set off the first blast on June 3, 1948, and spent the rest of his life on Thunderhead Mountain.

We dig into the 1.7-billion-year-old Harney Peak granite that made carving so brutally difficult, Ruth Ziolkowski’s decision to finish the face first to keep the project alive, the completed 87.5-foot face dedicated in 1998, and the modern foundation with $128 million in assets and a $5.2 million tower crane. We also lay out the deep opposition from many traditional Lakota, who argue Crazy Horse avoided being photographed, that his family was never consulted, and that blasting the sacred Black Hills is a desecration.

• Luther Standing Bear’s ignored letter asking Gutzon Borglum to add Crazy Horse to Mount Rushmore
• Why the project’s founders refused all government funding and how 75-cent admissions paid for dynamite
• How S-type granite full of quartz, tourmaline, and garnet splinters unpredictably under explosives
• Monique Ziolkowski’s engineering fixes to keep the 263-foot outstretched arm from shearing off
• The voices of Elaine Quiver, John Fire Lame Deer, Russell Means, and Seth Big Crow on consent, sacred land, and profit