The Bozeman Trail and the Goose Creek Valley

Of the three people this exhibit pictures, one was born a few miles off. Elsa Spear was born on a ranch near Big Horn on January 21, 1896, got her first camera at twelve, and photographed Apsáalooke (Crow) families, ranchers and the mountains for some eighty years. She wrote small booklets on the trail and the fort, and Charles Schreibeis sold Fort Phil Kearny, D.T., 1866-1868 at the site for $1.50 a copy to help pay for its care. A lake in the Bighorns carries her first name. She died on New Year's Day 1992, at ninety-five.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Trail End State Historic Site — 7.5 mi
  A Texas trail hand's Flemish Revival mansion, five years in the building, that he barely lived in once Wyoming sent him to the governor's office and the Senate.
• Sheridan Inn — 7.6 mi
  A hunting-lodge hotel with sixty-nine gables, where Buffalo Bill is said to have auditioned Wild West acts from the porch.
• Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A Bozeman Trail fort whose wood trains were attacked for two years, and the wagon-box corral where its woodcutters held out behind new breech-loaders in 1867.
• Connor Battlefield State Historic Site — 19 mi
  In 1865 General Connor's troops attacked Black Bear's Arapaho village here while many of its men were away; women and children died with the warriors.

More markers nearby

• Sheridan — steps away
• Bozeman Trail — 4.4 mi
• O. P. Hanna Cabin Marker and Sundial — 4.8 mi
• Site of the First Cabin Built in Sheridan — 7.2 mi