Alaskan Adventure: Day 14. On June 13th we traveled about 4 hours from Devils Tower, Wyoming to Hardin, Montana. The Hardin KOA is about 15 minutes from Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Again, the drive was beautiful, especially after the rain quit and the sun came out.

The Big Horn Mountain range is a spur of the Rocky Mountains. Lower elevation but high enough to get snow on June 13th. Pic below is a screen shot of a Facebook post about that area but further up in the mountains the next day. It did not snow on the I-90 highway but it was snowing in the mountains and almost to the highway (that white smudge area on the left). Elevation in this area was around 5,000′

We are familiar with “Tall Grass Prairie” like in the Kansas Flint Hills . Wyoming and Montana are “Short Grass Prairie”. It’s like a zillion acre golf course with rolling hills and a few sand traps. We took this dashcam pic because there were trees which are pretty rare except in valleys with water.

Little Bighorn National Battlefield is constructing a new Visitors Center (left side of photo). The temporary current “Visitors Center” is the trailer (right side of photo). While that was a bit of a disappointment, the rest of the visit was really interesting.

Got the stamp and got out. We were only a few days short of the 150th Anniversary of the Little Bighorn Battle. This was called Custer Battlefield National Monument until 1991 when George H W Bush changed it.

Little Bighorn National Cemetery has approximately 5,000 internments including the Little Bighorn Battle and other Indian Wars.

View from the Visitors Center up the hill of “Custer’s Last Stand”. It was a beautiful day, which stood in stark contrast to the solemn thoughts of the terrible battle that happened here.

The Memorial on top of the hill.

Looking down the hill from the Monument.

This was a different Custer (part of Custer’s group but unrelated).

Markers where Soldiers fell.

Markers where Indians fell.

A sunken Indian Monument has been added adjacent to the Soldier Monument.

Interesting to see the different viewpoints.

There is the view from another defensive position (called the Reno-Benteen Defensive Site) about a 4 1/2 mile drive from where Custer and his men died on “his” famous hill. The mountain range in the distance is where Indian scouts that were part of Custer’s cavalry spotted signs of the Indian village.

Custer sent Reno down to ‘flush out’ the Indian in the village in the valley while Custer stayed up in the hills and moved to attack. Custer did not know how big the village was because he didn’t want to be take the time to check and possibly be noticed, giving the Indians a chance to scatter.

Reno’s attack did not go well. They were quickly overwhelmed and retreated back up into the hills (about 4 1/2 miles from Custer). They basically defended themselves for 2 days and could not go to help Custer. Lots of debate/controversy on all this but being here and seeing the area where the battle took place really helped to understand some of the complexity and how awful it must have been for both sides.

A view down into the river valley where the Indian village was located. A peaceful serene place today.