Big Springs

Grey Beard, whose camp was the target in 1874, was a Southern Cheyenne medicine man and a leader of the Dog Men society. He fought Sumner's cavalry on the Kansas River in 1857 and, with Roman Nose, resisted the building of the Kansas Pacific Railroad in 1867, and he apparently did not sign the Medicine Lodge treaty. Short rations and vanishing buffalo drew his band off the reservation in 1874; hunger brought them in to the Darlington agency in March 1875. On the way to prison at Fort Marion he was shot dead trying to escape the train.

What the plaque says

Big Springs Native Americans and military forces have long camped at nearby springs that served as an oasis in the surrounding area. In 1852, U.S. Capt. Randolph B. Marcy led an expedition in search of the Red River headwaters, and his party camped here on June 16. Records of later military engagements and expeditions involving Col. Ranald S. MacKenzie, Gen. Nelson Miles and others also noted the springs. Archeological investigations have confirmed an 1874 battle between U.S. troops under Lt. Frank Baldwin and the forces of Cheyenne chief Grey Beard occurred in the general vicinity. Nearby development has dramatically decreased the flow of the historic Big Springs over the years. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center — 11 mi
  The old Harris Drug Store in Pampa, where a young Woody Guthrie jerked sodas and found his first guitar, now a folk music center with Friday night jam sessions.
• White Deer Land Museum — 11 mi
  The 1916 Pampa office of the land company that sold a foreclosed British ranch to wheat farmers, with an annex holding one of the Panhandle's largest Red River War collections.
• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — 18 mi
  A 1929 cottage-style Phillips 66 station on First Street in McLean, the town I-40 went around last and whose Route 66 business district stayed much as it was.
• Devil's Rope and Old Route 66 Museum — 19 mi
  Barbed wire and the Texas road in McLean's old brassiere factory: the fence that closed the open range, from the salesmen who sold it to the Panhandle ranches it divided.

More markers nearby

• Rescue of Two White Girls by Lt. Frank Baldwin — 0.6 mi
• Site of Pampa Army Air Force Base — 8.4 mi
• Red River Expedition of 1852 — 9.1 mi
• Gray County — 9.4 mi