For the complete story of the Black Hills Expedition of 1874, you may wish to order the book, Exploring With Custer. What follows is a brief introduction to a fascinating story.
On July 2, 1874, General George Armstrong Custer started out with a force of 1000 men, 110 wagons, and hundreds of horses, mules and cattle from the vicinity of Ft. Lincoln, Dakota Territory (near present-day Bismarck, N.D.) His orders were to go to the Black Hills (a little-known and mysterious range of mountains in present day western South Dakota), explore the territory, locate a potential site for a fort on the western side, find a connection to a previously known route from Ft. Laramie to the southwest, and report back to Ft. Lincoln by Aug. 30. Unofficially, the Expedition was also to confirm or deny the rumored presence of gold in the Black Hills. Until this time, no organized party of whites had traveled into the Black Hills and returned to civilization to tell about it, though several groups had passed around the perimeter of the mountains in earlier years.
After crossing the hot, dry Great Plains, the Black Hills Expedition arrived on the western side of the Black Hills on July 22, 1874. The entire force entered the pine-covered Hills, forging a road, cutting trees, building temporary bridges over gullies and streams - anything necessary to continue on their way with the wagon train. Working their way through the western Black Hills, the Expedition eventually arrived at a beautiful valley south of Harney’s Peak, now the site of the town of Custer, S.D. Here, and at a “permanent camp” 3 miles east, they stayed for 6 days, exploring and mapping the area, and climbing Harney’s Peak, while meanwhile back at camp civilian miners tested French Creek for gold, and found some.
On Aug. 6, the Expedition set out on their return trip to Ft. Lincoln, but it would be several days before they again reached the Plains. Retracing part of their route, they then struck new territory in the north-central Black Hills, finally exiting the mountains near present-day Black Hawk, SD. They camped one night near Bear Butte, and then began the trek back across the Great Plains toward home, arriving on Aug. 30, 1874.
This Expedition set the course for much of what was to follow in this region’s history. News of gold found in French Creek sent tens of thousands of miners rushing for the Black Hills over the next two years, despite some attempts by the U.S. military to hold them back from land which had been promised to the Sioux Nation by the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty. Eventually, the sheer numbers of invading whites made keeping them out impossible, but lingering resentment over the taking of the Black Hills no doubt contributed to the sweetness of victory by the Sioux and other Indians over General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
Now, 128 years later, a definitive new book on the 1874 Expedition has been published. Exploring With Custer: The 1874 Black Hills Expedition contains some 47 photographs made during the 1874 Expedition, along with modern photographs taken at the same locations. It tells the complete story of the Expedition, with a precise guide to following its trail through the Black Hills, along with day-by-day journal entries from officers, enlisted men and newspaper reporters who traveled with Custer that summer.
This project grew out of a fascination with the history of the 1874 Expedition and a desire to map its Black Hills route as closely as possible, before this information is lost to development or in the mists of time. In some places along the route, ruts which appear to be original to the Expedition are still visible. This is perhaps not too surprising when one considers that 110 wagons, 1000 men, and hundreds of horses, mules and cattle traveled this path in 1874.
In addition to tracing the route, re-photographing of the 1874 photo locations was a high priority. After extensive research, and months of field work and hiking, almost all of these sites in the Black Hills have been located and re-photographed. Three sites which have not been found contain so few landscape clues in the 1874 view that the researchers believe it is possible they will never be located; of these three sites, one may be under a man-made lake, and another could have been destroyed when a road was built. The researchers believe they know which valley the third photo was taken in, but the exact location cannot be determined by the clues shown in the 1874 photograph. All known information is provided in the new book so readers can explore this topic themselves.
The Custer Expedition Project will not end with the publication of Exploring With Custer. New facts and discoveries about the Expedition continue to surface, and the research team plans to continue compiling these for posting to this web site and eventually include them in future updates of the book. We welcome your input on this project; you can contact us at research@custertrail.com.