Hugh Glass - Adventurer

The bronze's two probablys hide a reunion. The first printed account, James Hall's in the Philadelphia Port Folio of 1825, put the story in circulation, and later tellings agree Glass found John Fitzgerald enlisted at Fort Atkinson and let him live, taking back his rifle. Glass died early in 1833 with Edward Rose and Hilain Menard in an Arikara attack on the frozen Yellowstone. The poet the plaque calls Neihart spelled his name Neihardt. The stone setting is petrified wood, like the park in nearby Lemmon.

What the plaque says

Hugh Glass - Adventurer Hugh Glass, a member of the Ashley Fur Party under Major Henry, going up the Grand River in August 1823, a habitual "loner", while hunting, was attacked by a grizzly bear near the Forks of Grand River. Horribly mauled, he could not be moved, a purse was made up, two men, probably Fitzgerald and Bridger, were left with him and they probably, believing him dead, took his gun and accoutrements and left him. He, however, was not dead and dragged himself to the stream, sustained himself on seasonal fruit and meat, obtained when he drove off some gorged wolves from a buffalo calf they had downed and by some means and by an uncertain route appeared at Ft. Kiowa, below the Big Bend, 190 miles as the crow flies from the Forks of Grand River. That much is verified history. He was killed by Aricara Indians on the ice of the Yellowstone River near mouth of the Big Horn in the winter of 1832-33. John G. Neihart in an epic poem, "The Song of Hugh Glass" has immortalized him. Alone, unarmed, terribly wounded it seems probable he proceeded at night on high ground, to avoid Indians, sought shelter and water in the day time and guided by his instinct succeeded in reaching the Big Bend and Ft. Kiowa. Whatever the details, it was a marvelous show of stamina and courage. This marker erected by the Lemmon Chamber of Commerce, The State Historical Society and the Game, Fish and Parks Commission, 1964

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hugh Glass Monument and Shadehill Reservoir — 1.5 mi
  Where the forks of the Grand River meet under a reservoir, a monument a poet raised in 1923 for a trapper mauled by a grizzly, with a message for the people of 2023.
• Lemmon Petrified Wood Park — 14 mi
  A city block of spires, pyramids and a castle built of petrified wood and dinosaur bone by out-of-work men during the Depression, for travelers coming in off the treeless prairie.

More markers nearby

• Bismarck-Deadwood Stage Trail — 18 mi