Historical Marker · No. 30
Steptoe Battlefield
Whitman County · Washington
Erected by Washington State Highway Commission; State Parks and Recreation Commission
The board is blunter than most of its era: it calls the dealings unenlightened and the subjugation ruthless. It does not say that this was a decisive victory for the Spokane, Palouse and Coeur d'Alene (Schitsu'umsh) fighters. Steptoe had marched north from Fort Walla Walla with two mountain howitzers through country the tribes held, and on the night of May 17, with the warriors drawn off to finish the fight in the morning, his men buried their dead and the howitzers, left fires burning and slipped away. A granite obelisk raised in 1914 stands in the park beside it.
Where it stands
47.22790, -117.35553 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Steptoe Butte — 14 miJames 'Cashup' Davis opened a hotel on the summit on July 4, 1888, at seventy-two; he died alone in it eight years later, and it burned in 1911.
More markers nearby
- Steptoe Butte — 16 mi
- DeSmet ('l'lkhwi'lus) — 22 mi
- Dawes Act — 22 mi
- World's Largest Mill — 30 mi