Beecher Island Battleground

The commemoration began with the soldiers themselves. In the fall of 1898, on the thirtieth anniversary of the fight, three of Forsyth's scouts piled stones at the site. The next September veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic posts at Wray and Vernon met there and formed an association; a wooden monument followed in 1901, and the annual reunion that has been held ever since took shape around it.

Colorado and Kansas each appropriated money in 1905, Congress deeded 120 acres to the association, and the Denver Marble and Granite Company built a $5,000 monument on the island, dedicated at that year's reunion and listing Forsyth's scouts by name. In 1925 the Colorado legislature paid for an association hall on the north bank of the Arikaree. On May 31, 1935, the river flooded. The water tore through the bottomland, swept the monument from its base and scoured away almost every trace of the island the scouts had dug into in 1868.

Parts of the monument were recovered and set up again on the north side of the river, and its marble still carries water stains from the flood. The association owns about 240 acres of pasture and river bottom where the fighting took place, and the graves of the scouts who died lie near the monument. The site is on a county road about sixteen miles south of Wray, and the Beecher Island Memorial Association still holds its reunion on the third weekend of September.