The Four-Ton Machine That Cost Crazy Horse Eleven Years (1949)

On June 3, 1948, a man with $174 to his name drove four holes into a South Dakota mountain by hand and blew ten tons off it. Seventy-eight years later, Crazy Horse Memorial is still unfinished. The reason is not money, and it is not politics. It is a four-ton second-hand gasoline air compressor that sat at the bottom of 741 wooden steps for eleven years.Enjoyed this documentary? Subscribe for more deep dives into the world's most powerful machines:👉 Construction Legends: https://www.youtube.com/@ConstructionLegends?sub_confirmation=1☕ Support our work: https://buymeacoffee.com/ConstructionLegendsKorczak Ziolkowski called it Old Buda, after the Buda Engine Company of Harvey, Illinois, whose engine sat inside it. He ran 2,040 feet of three-inch pipe from that compressor, around the base of Thunderhead Mountain, up the far side and over the top, to feed a single jackhammer. We ran the numbers on that pipeline, and what we found reverses the story everyone tells about this mountain. The pipe was never the problem. The problem was a twenty-four-year-old engine at the bottom of a staircase with nobody standing beside it. On one recorded day, Korczak climbed those 741 steps nine times to restart it.This documentary follows the machinery: the compressor, the 741-step staircase Korczak built himself, the bucket cable car driven by an antique Chevrolet engine, the first bulldozer bought on October 13, 1953, and the Union Carbide jet-piercing torch that finishes granite at over three thousand degrees. It also covers the day a bulldozer went over the edge with Korczak's son in the seat, and why his mother's account and his own flatly contradict each other. Where the record runs out, we say so.📌 CHAPTERS00:00 The Four Holes That Started It03:21 The Man Who Picked the Wrong Mountain06:41 Old Buda and the 741 Steps15:09 Nineteen Days22:07 What It CostSOURCESCrazy Horse Memorial Foundation — Pictorial Timeline: https://crazyhorsememorial.org/the-story/pictorial-timelineNational Park Service — Mount Rushmore, How Big Are The Heads: https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/kidsyouth/how-big-are-the-heads.htmHistorical Construction Equipment Association — The Buda Company records: https://archives.hcea.netArchival images and footage used under fair use for historical documentary and educational commentary.#construction #heavymachinery #engineering #crane #excavator #megaproject #documentary #crazyhorse #mountrushmore #blackhills #aircompressor #bulldozer