Artist’s family inherits monumental task : Guided by their father’s vision, the Ziolkowskis are nearing a milestone in their efforts to sculpt a mountain into the image of Crazy Horse.

For so long, it was a simple mountaintop. But there is no mistaking the human figure now staring out from the peak of Thunderhead Mountain. It is the granite face of the Sioux warrior Crazy Horse, finally emerging after almost a half-century’s work by a long-dead sculptor and the persistent family who survived him.

Nine stories tall and large enough to contain all four of the presidential heads looming from neighboring Mt. Rushmore, the nearly completed face of Crazy Horse is the first milestone in a project expected to dwarf every other sculpture on Earth and take more than a lifetime to complete.

When it is done, the 563-foot-high carving--taller than either the Washington Monument or the Great Pyramid of Giza--will show the Indian warrior chief astride a mammoth stallion, arm extended out toward the Black Hills.

With so far to go, the survivors of Korczak Ziolkowski, the Polish-American sculptor who launched the project in 1948, have no illusions that some of them may not live to make the finishing touches on the monument. But the emergence of Crazy Horse’s face--his brow, nose, eyes and lips now prominent and his chin beginning to protrude--has given the Ziolkowskis their first sure sign of progress, a phase scheduled for completion in 1998--the 50th anniversary of Ziolkowski’s dream.

“There are days I go up there and look up at the face, and it just hits me how far we’ve come,” said Casimir Ziolkowski, 42, one of the sculptor’s 10 children.

After spending 34 years working on Thunderhead Mountain, supervising dynamiting and stone-drilling, Casimir Ziolkowski has learned to measure his time in increments. “For me, every day we work is one day closer to being finished,” he said.

Casimir is one of seven Ziolkowski children working on the project under the direction of Korczak Ziolkowski’s 70-year-old widow, Ruth. One sister, Monique, makes the intricate calculations necessary to direct the explosions and drilling with pinpoint accuracy. Another, Ann, runs the gift shop. Jadwiga Ziolkowski is the operation’s business manager and a third sister, Dawn, handles mailings. Brother Mark builds roads and manages timber, while brother Adam takes care of the monument property and nearby farm.

They are aided by a crew of 13 workers, who are paid by a fund-raising effort that is nearing $6 million, but still swells and diminishes each year. Despite several offers, Korczak Ziolkowski refused any government aid, a decision his family has stuck to during years when dwindling funds forced temporary suspension of work. Working when the money comes in, the crews have blasted nearly 8.5 million tons of granite off the top of the mountain.

The monument was a successful tourist attraction even when the peak of Thunderhead Mountain yielded only a vision of pocked pink granite. But the emergence of Crazy Horse’s face in recent years has helped boost attendance into the range of a million visitors a year, the Ziolkowskis say.

“I came here 12 years ago and the difference is astonishing,” said Jeff Baines, 51, a visiting Omaha contractor who took turns with his wife and two sons gazing into a telescope to look at the face on the mountain. “Can you imagine what it will look like when it’s all carved out? It just shows you what human determination can do.”

The Ziolkowskis have inherited their father’s patience, quoting him incessantly for inspiration. “Dad always said, ‘Go slow and do it right,’ ” said Ann Ziolkowski. “In a way, we have to look at what we do through his eyes. He knew it couldn’t happen overnight. As long as you remember that, you don’t get frustrated.”

A crew assistant who worked on the Mt. Rushmore sculptures in 1939, Korczak Ziolkowski undertook his dream project after a request from Indian leaders to honor Crazy Horse, who led the charge against Gen. George Armstrong Custer at the battle of the Little Big Horn, then was murdered at the age of 33.

In scale models of the mountain sculpture, Ziolkowski depicted Crazy Horse pointing toward Sioux burial grounds. “My lands are where my dead lie buried,” reads the legend Ziolkowski chose.

The sculptor’s family has generally won plaudits from the state’s Native American groups for their work. Later this month, the Ziolkowskis will open a Native American Education and Cultural Center, a facility walled with granite blast fragments. The center will be staffed by Indians, hosting local students and displaying works by Native American artists.

On a recent day when Casimir Ziolkowski blasted more rock fragments on the mountain, a busload of visiting Indian students from the Canadian province of Manitoba were so awed by the face of Crazy Horse that they broke into an impromptu tribal chant of praise on the lodge’s observation deck.

The detonations proceeded, as they always have on Thunderhead Mountain, with workmanlike precision. After securing explosive cords in rock furrows well beneath Crazy Horse’s craggy face, Casimir Ziolkowski retreated to a protective cage atop the mountain.

“Fire in the hole!” he shouted.

Thunderhead Mountain rumbled, its cliffs dusty with falling rocks, one day closer to its transformation into a mounted Indian warrior.