Crawford

The captain the town is named for was dead before it was incorporated in August 1886. Emmet Crawford, a Pennsylvanian who lied about his age to enlist in 1861, came here with the first troops in March 1874. By late 1885 he was leading Apache scouts after Geronimo in Mexico. His scouts found Geronimo's camp on January 9, 1886; soon after, Mexican irregulars attacked them, and Crawford, waving a white handkerchief to stop the firing, was shot in the head. He died on January 18. He was buried in Mexico, then Kearney, and since 1908 at Arlington.

What the plaque says

Crawford Crawford sprang up as a tent city on land owned by homesteader-newspaper correspondent William E. Annin in 1886 when the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad pushed through the Nebraska Pan- handle. To incorporate the town, editor William Edgar supplemented civilian signatures with those of obliging soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Robinson. After the Burlington Railroad passed northward in 1887, Crawford became a supply depot and enter- tainment center for the Fort. Troops no longer man the "Outpost on the Plains," but the Fort, 3 miles to the west, remains as an important historic site and tourist attraction. Named for Army Captain Emmet Crawford, a Fort Robinson soldier, the city lies in the White River Valley in Pine Ridge country and serves an extensive cattle ranching and farming area. The Fort Laramie- Fort Pierre Fur Trail of the 1840s and the Sidney- Black Hills Trail active during the Black Hills gold rush of the 1870s both passed through this site. Crawford has been host or home to such personages as Sioux Chief Red Cloud; former desperado David (Doc) Middleton; poet-scout John Wallace Crawford; frontierswoman Calamity Jane; Army scout Baptiste (Little Bat) Garnier, shot down in a saloon; military surgeon Walter Reed, conqueror of yellow fever; and President Theodore Roosevelt. Crawford Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Robinson State Park — 3.2 mi
  The army post beside the Red Cloud Agency where Crazy Horse was bayoneted in 1877 and Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out into the January cold of 1879.
• Toadstool Geologic Park — 15 mi
  A pocket of badlands in the Oglala National Grassland where sandstone caps balance on clay stems, ancient tracks cross the rock, and a trail leads on to a 10,000-year-old bison bone bed.
• Agate Fossil Beds National Monument — 24 mi
  A fossil quarry on the Niobrara that also keeps the gifts Red Cloud and other Lakota and Cheyenne visitors gave the ranching family who were their friends for thirty-five years.

More markers nearby

• Crawford 1891 School Bell — 0.3 mi
• The Death of Baptiste Garnier — 0.7 mi
• Red Cloud Agency — 1.7 mi
• German P.O.W. Camp — 1.9 mi