In Memory of Anna Donna Tallent

The obelisk went up in 1924 near the site of the Gordon Stockade, where Tallent wintered with the party that entered the Hills in December 1874 against the treaty. Its bronze gives her birthday as April 12, 1827; the state historical society's account gives April 14. In the spring of 1875 a cavalry detail marched the party out, so that, as the society once put it, she was the first white woman to leave as well. She came back in 1876 and ran Pennington County's schools from 1891 to 1895.

What the plaque says

In memory of Anna Donna Tallent Teacher and author. Born in New York State, April 12, 1827. Died in Sturgis, S. Dakota, February 13, 1901. The first white woman to enter the Black Hills, arriving in Custer City in December 1874. This monument is erected by the Society of Black Hills Pioneers and many admirers. "The world is better because she lived and worked in it."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Needles Highway — 3.4 mi
  Fourteen miles that Governor Peter Norbeck laid out on foot and horseback through the granite spires, threading a tunnel eight feet wide.
• Crazy Horse Memorial — 6.6 mi
  A Lakota elder's answer to Mount Rushmore, carved for more than seventy years by one family with private money, and still argued over by Crazy Horse's own relatives.
• Black Elk Peak — 6.8 mi
  The highest summit in the Black Hills, renamed in 2016 for an Oglala holy man after carrying, for 150 years, the name of the general who attacked a Sicangu camp in 1855.
• State Game Lodge — 7.5 mi
  The lodge where Calvin Coolidge spent the summer of 1927, fishing for trout, dedicating Mount Rushmore, and deciding not to run again.

More markers nearby

• Campsite of General Custer's Expedition — 0.4 mi
• Memorial to Horace N. Ross — 3.5 mi
• The Badger Hole — 3.9 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - French Creek — 4.0 mi