Geological Survey Bulletin 611 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part A

SHEET No. 11. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Just beyond the village of Fallon (see sheet 11, p. 72) the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway enters the valley of Yellowstone River from Fallen Creek, and near milepost 36 it crosses the Northern Pacific tracks by an overhead bridge. In this vicinity, as elsewhere in the Yellowstone Valley, two plants characteristic of the semi arid West are very abundant, the cottonwood tree (Populus) and the sage (Artemisia). The courses of the river and its tributaries can be followed across the prairies where the bluffs are low by the lines of cottonwood trees, and even in the lower part of the mountains these trees are generally found where there is running water. Sagebrush originally covered most of the bottom land of the valley, but it has been removed in many places to make room for valuable crops. Many people suppose that the growth of sagebrush is indicative of poor soil, but such is not the case, and a person familiar with the habits of the plant will always prefer a plot of land on which the sagebrush grows to large size.

The village of Terry, named in honor of Gen. Alfred H. Terry, who commanded the expedition of 1876 in what is commonly known as the Custer campaign, is served by both the Northern Pacific and St. Paul roads. The light-colored sandstones which give to the Fort Union formation its distinctive color are well developed between Cedar Creek and Terry, but at Terry, in the lower part of the formation, there begins a change in color and composition that will become more evident as the traveler proceeds westward.¹

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¹The large lignite bed on the west side of the river, which can readily be seen from the train near Terry, is regarded as the base of the Fort Union formation. Beginning a short distance down the river below Terry, there appears just above this bed a band of dark shale which increases in thickness up the river to 50 feet in the bluff opposite the town and to 200 feet a mile or so farther west. The traveler, if he looks closely, can recognize this more somber-colored belt. It is made up of dark shale and sandstone, which, when examined under a microscope, are found to contain a large quantity of volcanic material in the form of lava fragments and volcanic dust or ash. These particles have been washed and rolled over in water until all have been reduced to fine mud or sand. This band of dark material has been followed westward nearly to its source, which must have been somewhere in the vicinity of Yellowstone Park. In that region the formation is much thicker than it is farther east and the materials composing it are coarser, as would naturally be expected of material dropped near the shore. South or southwest of Livingston there were at one time great volcanic outbursts, and the material thus thrown out was swept away by the currents of water and deposited in a layer that ex tended for a great distance toward the east. This widespread sheet of volcanic sedimentary material is known as the Lebo shale member of the Fort Union formation.

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About 2 miles above Terry the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway crosses Yellowstone River, and it remains on the far side nearly to Miles City. The big coal bed at the base of the Lebo shale may be observed on both sides of the valley as far as the mouth of Powder River and on the opposite side of the river for some distance beyond that point. The rocks rise gradually upstream, and within a short distance the Lebo shale, which is only a little above river level at Terry, rises so high that it disappears from the adjacent bluffs and the underlying Lance forms all the hills that are in sight between Powder and Tongue rivers.

In the vicinity of Miles City is Signal Butte, a high knob about 4 miles southwest of the railway, which can be seen from passing trains. It is reported that in the early days, before the railway had been built into this region, officers from Fort Keogh (ke'o) used this butte for sending and receiving messages from the Black Hills, 175 miles distant. The signaling was done with a heliograph, an instrument for reflecting the sun's rays in any desired direction and flashing messages in the Morse code. On account of this use the knob received its name.

Miles City, at the mouth of Tongue River, was named in honor of Gen. Nelson A. Miles, an experienced Indian fighter, who had already established Fort Keogh on the river bottom about 2 miles farther west. Miles City is said to be the greatest horse market in the West, and is also an important wool-shipping point, In the early days the principal industry was the hunting of the buffalo or bison, and it is reported that as many as 250,000 hides were shipped from this place in one season. Such numbers are almost inconceivable, but it is well known that the buffalo roamed the plains in great herds, and when the slaughter was carried on in wholesale fashion the number killed must have been very great. Capt. Clark and his party, in descending the Yellowstone in boats, were forced to wait near Glendive until a herd of buffalo numbering, by his estimate, 80,000 had crossed the river. Now all traces of the buffalo are gone from these plains except an occasional sun-bleached skull or a few weather-beaten horns. (See fig. 8.)

FIGURE 8.—Sun-bleached skull near Miles City, Mont. The skulls and bones are all that remain of the great herds of buffalo that once roamed these plains.

Some distance below Tongue River the St. Paul road crosses the Yellowstone, and Miles City has the advantage of two transcontinental railways.

West of Tongue River, on the right (north), is Fort Keogh, which was built by Gen. Miles in 1877 and named in honor of Capt. Myles W. Keogh, who perished in the Battle of the Little Bighorn the year before. For a long time this was probably the most important post in the Indian country, but now it is used only as a remount station, where horses are trained for cavalry service.

The St. Paul road crosses to the north side of the Yellowstone again a short distance above Fort Keogh, and it remains on that side of the stream to Forsyth, where it turns northwestward and crosses the divide to Musselshell River. The Northern Pacific line continues on the south side, running in places along the wide, flat bottoms and in others on the river bank, where it is overhung by cliffs and steep slopes of sandstone, shale, and coal beds of the Lance formation. Generally the coal beds are thin or variable in thickness; but in places they thicken, as between mileposts 92 and 93, where four beds are visible from the train. Two or three of these beds are thick enough to work and some day may be mined, although the coal is not of very high quality. It is much better, however, than the lignite of North Dakota or that around Glendive and is classed as subbituminous—a grade between lignite and ordinary bituminous coal.

A similar change in the character of the coal or lignite can be found in almost all the fields of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast, In every field the coal improves in quality toward the mountains, in places ranging from lignite to subbituminous coal or from subbituminous coal to anthracite within the limits of a single field. Such changes are doubtless due to greater stresses in the rocky crust of the earth in the mountains than in the plains, and as the coal is the weakest member of the rocks forming that crust it was most compressed and changed.

The chief interest in the trip from Miles City to Rosebud lies in the fact that the railroad was constructed along the same route as that followed by Custer in his approach to the great battle that terminated his career.¹

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¹In the spring of 1876 the Sioux Indians exhibited signs of unrest, and some of the more adventurous spirits among them deserted their reservations and began to assemble a force which the Government feared might at any time take the warpath and cause pillage and slaughter along the frontier. Sitting Bull was the leader of the insurrection. Gen. Crook with 1,000 men at Fort Fetterman (near Douglas), on North Platte River, Wyo.; Gen. Terry with another 1,000 at Fort Abraham Lincoln, near Mandan, N. Dak.; and Gen. Gibbon with 450 men at Fort Ellis, near Bozeman, Mont., were ordered to force the Sioux back to their reservations.

The command of Gen. Crook, the greatest Indian fighter of his time, was defeated by the Indians in a battle on the headwaters of Rosebud River June 17, before he could effect a junction with the other parts of the expedition. He tried to notify Terry and Custer of his defeat and to warn them of the great number of Indians engaged in the campaign, but his scouts failed to reach them, and Custer proceeded from the mouth of Tongue River (Miles City) June 19, supposing the Indian force to be a small one which he could overcome in a single daring charge. Custer had just returned from Washington, where he had had difficulty with his superior officers, and, doubtless smarting under the charges made against him and the indignity of a threatened court-martial, he was in the mood to stake all on the chance of winning an immediate and brilliant victory. Maj. Reno, of his command, had been on a scouting trip into the Rosebud Valley, where he found abundant indications of a party of Indians who had recently moved westward toward the Little Bighorn.

On June 21 Custer's command camped at the mouth of Rosebud River, where they were joined by the troops under the command of Gen. Gibbon. The plan of the battle was for Custer to move up the Rosebud until he found the trail reported by Reno and then to follow it until he reached the Indian camp, which was supposed to be on the Little Bighorn. Gibbon's command was to march back on the north side of the Yellowstone to the mouth of Bighorn River, and there Terry and Gibbon were to meet them on the steamer Far West and ferry them across the river. Gibbon was then to lead his command up the Bighorn and strike the enemy from the north at the same time that Custer made his attack on the east and south.

Custer did not pause at the mouth of the Rosebud but was away the next morning on his march up that stream. After following it for about 70 miles he found the great trail that the Indians had made across the ridge toward the Little Bighorn. He did not wait to give Gibbon time to move his troops up from the mouth of Bighorn River but pressed on until the Indians were actually sighted in an enormous camp on the Little Bighorn. Here he divided his forces, directing Reno to descend to the stream at the upper end of the camp and sweep down the valley, while he scouted along the hills on the east, apparently intending to attack the Sioux from that side simultaneously with Reno's charge and put them to flight.

Reno failed in his effort to drive the Indians down the valley and early in the action took to the hills on the east, where after considerable fighting he managed to secure a position that he held throughout the engagement. The whole force of the Indians was then directed against Custer, and he, as well as his entire command, with the exception of an Indian guide, were slain. Reno was besieged in the hills until he was rescued by the force under Gibbon, which arrived, however, too late to take an active part in the battle. When Gibbon's troops arrived the Indians left the valley and after some skirmishes with the soldiers returned to their reservations.

The soldiers killed in this battle numbered 265. They are buried in a national cemetery on the spot where they fell, with fitting monuments commemorating the bravery of their last fight against overwhelming numbers.

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