Custer and Hiddenwood Cliff, Haynes, North Dakota - North Dakota Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Located just north of the ND/SD border on US Highway 12.

Guided to Hiddenwood Cliff by Sioux and Arikara scouts, General George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry camped on this famed buffalo hunting spot on July 8, 1874. The Custer Expidition was on its way to the Black Hills of South Dakota and its camp consumed a broad area with 2,000 men, 1000 horses, 900 mules, 300 beef cattle, and 150 wagons.

Custer and 10 companies from his 7th Cavalry left Ft. Abraham Lincoln near present day Bismarck on July 2, 1874. Custer's orders were to explore the Black Hills territory and locate a potential site for a fort on the western side. Unofficially, the expedition was to confirm or deny the rumored presence of gold in the Black Hills, which was then part of the Great Sioux Reservation.

The evening at Hiddenwood a reporter described the scene: "We have suffered and panted through a march of twenty miles to enjoy this balmy evening and this beautiful spot -- the most beautiful in varied scenery of any we have yet seen. This place, the only timber in a radius of thirty miles, is called Pahachechacha, or Hidden Wood by the Indians, because the hills so cluster around it that the trees cannot be seen two miles away -- one of the few shady oases in this desert of prairie land, and very grateful after a week's marching. For a background a sunset as gorgeously beautiful as any that ever glowed and a high, jagged bluff covered with clusters of trees, with a clear stream of water running at its base. In the foreground a smooth grassy plain covered with tents, hooded wagons, and grazing horses, a band in the center playing familiar airs, and an atmosphere cool, fresh and bracing, and you get a picture of camp to-night."

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