The Powder River

The campaign the board describes kept a depot at this river's mouth. In early June 1876 Terry moved his supplies from Glendive's Stanley Stockade to the meeting of the Powder and the Yellowstone, about seven miles west of Terry, and the camp grew to some hundred tents. Custer led the 7th Cavalry out on June 15, leaving the regiment's mounted band behind and taking its horses. The BLM archaeologist Gerald Clark excavated the site in 1985, and on June 15, 2026, more than a hundred people gathered there for the 150th anniversary.

What the plaque says

The Powder River This is the river that exuberant parties claim is a mile wide, an inch deep, and runs uphill. The statement is exaggerated. Captain William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, named it the Redstone in July 1806 and afterwards found out that the Indians called it the same thing, but they pronounced it "Wa-har-sah." Clark thought the river "disagreeably muddy," but observed "great numbers of Buffalo feeding on the plains, elk on the points and antilopes." He also "saw Some of the Bighorn animals at a distance on the hills." Clark camped just across the Yellow- stone River from the mouth of the Powder on the night of July 30, 1806. General Alfred H. Terry and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, moving from the east to take part in a campaign against the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Indians in the spring of 1876, camped on the Yellowstone about 25 miles west of here on June 10th. From that point, Terry and Custer ordered Major Marcus Reno with six troops of the Seventh Cavalry to scout the Powder and Tongue river valleys for signs of the Indians. During his reconnaissance, Reno and his command swung further west than ordered and picked up a fresh trail on Rosebud Creek. It was this trail that led Custer to his fatal encounter with the tribes on the Little Big Horn River a few days later.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Miles City Bucking Horse Sale — 31 mi
  A sale of bucking stock that began with thirty-five unwanted horses in 1950 and became eastern Montana's biggest weekend.

More markers nearby

• The Yellowstone River — 22 mi
• The Red-Capped Hills of Eastern Montana — 22 mi
• After the Roundup — 28 mi
• The Tongue River — 32 mi