Flagstaff, 1890

The post flew no flag for its first two years, and an agency flagpole may be why. On October 23, 1874, armed Lakota men chopped up the pine pole agent John J. Saville had raised inside the Red Cloud Agency stockade; the chiefs had objected that it looked too much like a military camp. Lt. Emmet Crawford's twenty-two soldiers were surrounded by some four hundred warriors until Oglala akicita led by Sitting Bull of the South beat a path to the stockade and Old Man Afraid of His Horses talked the crowd down.

What the plaque says

Flagstaff, 1890 This flagstaff, 105 feet high, is constructed of metal pipe with a ladder and crow's nest for buglers. It was originally on the other side of the 1905 headquarters near the highway, having replaced an earlier flagstaff blown down by an 1889 windstorm. In 1930, after run- away mules felled the flagpole, the commanding officer ordered it relocated here. Sergeant John Kailey, with the longest service record at the garrison, hoisted the flag for the first time, on Washington's birthday, 1876. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Robinson State Park — steps away
  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 — 14 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 — 22 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

• Post Headquarters, 1905 — steps away
• Adobe Officers' Quarters — steps away
• 1887 Barracks Row — steps away
• 1909 Brick Barracks — steps away