Wood Mountain Trail

The trail's far end is where Sitting Bull spent his last free years. About five thousand Lakota had gathered near Wood Mountain by the spring of 1877, when he arrived, and Inspector James Walsh of the North-West Mounted Police rode in with a handful of men to promise protection if they kept Canadian law. The two became friends. Canada refused the Lakota a reserve or rations as the buffalo grew scarce, and in 1880 Ottawa, judging Walsh too close to the chief, moved him away. A Wood Mountain trader, Jean-Louis Légaré, came south with Sitting Bull in 1881.

What the plaque says

Wood Mountain Trail This ancient trail extended from the Yellowstone River past this point to the Wood Mountains in southwestern Saskatchewan. It was used for generations by the Sioux and Assiniboine Indians in pursuit of buffalo and for trade with the Canadian tribes west of the Great Lakes. Refusing to surrender to the U.S. Army, Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa followers often used the trail in the years following the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Eventually becoming homesick for his people and perhaps realizing the futility of his fight, he rode this trail for the last time in July, 1881 to Fort Buford where he finally surrendered to his enemies. It was during the late 1880s that cattlemen drove longhorns over the Wood Mountain Trail into northeastern Montana. By the second decade of the 20th century, this region was populated by hundreds of homesteaders who sought their own piece of the American dream on the windswept plains of northeastern Montana. While many failed to realize their ambitions, they left an indelible mark on the landscape and culture of the region. During the height of the homestead boom in the 1910s, Scobey was the largest primary shipping point of grain in the world.

Where it stands