Junction of Bighorn and Yellowstone Rivers

The board's steamer had a pilot it does not name. Grant Marsh had the Far West at the mouth of the Little Bighorn when the wounded from Reno's hill were carried aboard by two in the morning on June 30, 1876. After two days ferrying Gibbon's troops across the Yellowstone at the Bighorn's mouth, he started down on July 3 and ran more than seven hundred miles to Fort Abraham Lincoln in about fifty-four hours, a speed no packet boat on the Missouri matched again. He arrived late on July 5 with the first word of the defeat.

What the plaque says

Junction of Bighorn and Yellowstone Rivers The area that surrounds the mouth of the Bighorn River as it enters the Yellowstone 13 miles east of here is one of the most significant areas in Montana history. The Indians knew the Yellowstone as the Elk River. French explorers called it the Roche Jaune, while they called the Bighorn Le Corne. Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, on his return trip from their journey to the Pacific Ocean, camped on the east bank of the Bighorn River, Saturday, July 26th, 1806. The following year, on November 21st, 1807, an expedition led by Manuel Lisa, a St. Louis fur trader, arrived at the mouth of the Bighorn River. He built a fur trading post which he named Fort Remon in honor of his two-year-old son. This was the first building erected in what is now the State of Montana. From here Lisa sent John Colter to make contact with the Indians who were in winter camp to induce them to come to his post and trade their furs for goods. On this journey Colter experienced the wonders of present-day Yellowstone National Park. In 1876 during the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian campaign of that year, General Terry and Colonel Gibbon marched up the Bighorn River to the site of Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. They arrived two days after the battle. The steamer Far West, carrying supplies, plied the waters of both rivers and brought the wounded from that encounter back to Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota territory.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• The Great Highway of the Northwest: The Yellowstone Trail — steps away
• Buffalo Country — steps away
• Junction of Bighorn and Yellowstone Rivers — 3.0 mi
• Camp #44 of the 1873 Yellowstone Expedition — 18 mi