Campsite of General Custer's Expedition

The bronze leaves its scout messenger unnamed. He was Charley Reynolds, called Lonesome Charley, who volunteered when Custer's Indian scouts would not ride through Lakota country to Fort Laramie, and who went south alone carrying Custer's dispatches and the reporters' stories of gold. The news was telegraphed east from Laramie, and the rush followed. Reynolds was killed at the Little Bighorn less than two years later. The bronze calls these the forbidden Black Hills; the 1868 treaty forbade them to the miners who came anyway.

What the plaque says

Campsite of General Custer's Expedition August 1-6, 1874 This picturesque valley was the site of the permanent camp of the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 under the command of General George A. Custer of the 7th Cavalry. Their 5 day stay was the longest stop made during the entire expedition and General Custer used this campsite as a base for reconnaissance trips to other points in the Black Hills. The expedition party totaled about 1000 men, 1900 horses and mules, 300 beef cattle and 110 wagons. In addition to the cavalry, the personnel included nearly 100 Indian scouts, guides, interpreters, engineers, newspaper correspondents, two practical miners, and a photographer. This is said to have been the largest and best equipped expedition ever assembled, up to that time, for military exploration duty in the Northwest. The entire valley was scattered with their tents and wagons during their stay. Gold was first discovered in French Creek, which runs through the valley, by Horatio N. Ross. This discovery of gold led to the first Miners' Organization in the Black Hills which was formed around a campfire on August 5, 1874. Because of the discovery of gold here, General Custer gave to this place the name of "Golden Valley." General Custer sent a scout messenger out from this camp to carry the word to Ft. Laramie that gold had been discovered on French Creek. This caused a stampede over the country to force entrance into these forbidden Black Hills. Late in December 1874, the first settlers, the Collins-Russell party, under the guidance of John Gordon, reached this site. Thousands of gold seekers soon followed. Erected 1971 by Custer Co. Hist. Soc., State Hist. Soc., and State Highway Dept.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Needles Highway — 3.8 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 — 6.2 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 — 6.6 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 — 7.9 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

• In Memory of Anna Donna Tallent — 0.4 mi
• Memorial to Horace N. Ross — 3.2 mi
• The Badger Hole — 4.3 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - French Creek — 4.4 mi