Journey to Red Lodge

We left our quaint Hermosa VRBO this morning and will miss it along with our new animal friend, Herman.  A few more oics:

I knew the first leg of our trip was a hit when Francey mentioned more than once how she wanted to come back to S Dakota.  There are a lot of great things to see there.

Our goal today was to make it to Red Lodge, MT for the beautiful Beartooth Highway Drive into Yellowstone, and I also wanted to incorporate the Little Bighorn battlefield.  However we first made an impromptu stop in Deadwood, SD to look around.  We had seen it before, but the Briggs had not.

General George Armstrong Custer is remembered everywhere we've been in the last few days.  In Southwest SD, there is a town and a county and a state park bearing his name.  He apparently camped with some fellow soldiers at the area now known as Custer state park back in his day.

In 1874 Custer and his men discovered gold in the Black Hills north of Rapid City, and a gold rush set in.  Since the Black Hills had already been set aside for the Native Americans by treaty, the US tried to do some finagling to get this area back, but after negotiations failed, they simply took it back.  The town of Deadwood sprang up where the gold was discovered, and it became a boomtown.  Immigrants from around the world settled there.  The town has been built and rebuilt over the years.  It probably saw its most prosperous times around the turn of the century.  Here is what it looks like now:

Deadwood's most famous citizen was James Butler Hickok . . . also known as "Wild Bill."  Unfortunately after living in Deadwood for just a few weeks in 1976, he was shot in the back of the head while playing poker.  There is another old row of buildings now standing where he was shot in Saloon #10.  Here is the storefront of the building now standing where Saloon #10 once was:

From Deadwood, we traveled north until taking Highway 212 through some really remote areas including the small town of Broadus, MT and an Indian Reservation holding the town of Lame Deer.  For what seemed like the drive that would never end, we finally made it to the battlefield on the Little Bighorn River where General Custer made his famous last stand.  I had heard about his legend for many years and was glad that I was finally able to see where it all took place.  Just like Civil War battlefields I have visited before, this felt like hallowed ground.

Apparently, Custer traveled with a fairly large Cavalry unit, the 7th Cavalry, but during this battle he was separated from his larger group and was overwhelmed by a vast army of warriors of several Indian nations that had banded together.  A total of 231 US soldiers are believed to have fallen in that battle.  Custer and 40 men died on this hill.  The markers are placed where they fell.  As you look down the hill a ways, other markers are visible where they believe a skirmish line may have been:

Looking down the hill a little ways

Many other men died around this hill and on the nearby ridge.  The larger portion of the 7th Cavalry was under siege 5 miles down the ridge for 2 days until reinforcements arrived.  They suffered casualties as well, but what I learned today was that many US soldiers that were there lived to see another day.  It all apparently started when the US army wanted to uproot a nearby village in an effort to get all plains Indians on reservations.  

Here is a plaque from the bluff 5 miles from Custer's last stand that overlooked the village across the Little bighorn River:

After Little Bighorn, we drove through Billings and onto Red Lodge.  Because we arrived a little after 10:00 we couldn't get a good look around, but it looks like a really nice town nestled near the northern edge of mountains.  We look forward to looking arund and taking the Beartooth pass through the mountains toward Yellowstone tomorrow.  We're only about 70 miles from the eastern Park entrance here.  The Yodeler Motel, where we are staying, is historic in its own right as it was built in 1907 as a hotel.  We'll hopefully get some pictures tomorrow.